Saturday 29 March 2008

First proper haircut

Jasmine's been looking quite messy recently and since she's going to be a bridesmaid at her uncle's wedding in a couple of days' time, we decided to get her hair cut properly by an expert. Not wanting to repeat the disappointment and guilt of her last haircut (which I gave her at home) I elected to book her into a specialist kiddie hairdressers' attached to one of those boutique, i-saw-you-coming-type childrenswear shops.

Sadly I missed most of the actual haircut because Felix decided to do a huge, simultaneous nappy-filling poo and vomit whilst Jambeans was being coiffed and I had to go change him. When he was on the changing table, he then topped his initial performance by doing a second bout of simultaneous vomiting and projectile pooing (again, both in large quantity) but threw in a generous fountain of wee for good measure. I wouldn't have minded so much if it weren't for the fact that the changing table was on the shop floor itself, so all the yummy mummy shoppers got to watch me race to mop up all the various effluents the bub was throwing out whilst browsing through the designer kit for their Crouch End kiddies.

Thursday 27 March 2008

HSBCs

So we've just invented a new acronym for Jazzie's recent spate of messy poos:

Huge Sticky Bottom Chocolates

aka HSBCs

Cuggles

Okaaay, I confess I have omitted to write about a HUGE milestone in Jambeans development... namely, she can talk.

So this time around I'm just gonna skip the usual guff about how guilty I feel for not mentioning it earlier and will fast forward through describing all the various stages of babble, jargoning and vocal development she's undergone and will just say that Jasmine's latest favourite word is "cuggles" (ie 'cuddles') and as she says it she holds up her arms and looks at me imploringly with those big doe eyes and it just meeeeelts my heart.

Monday 24 March 2008

Blissed out at 5 weeks

Easter Monday. Felix is 5 weeks old today. Hurrah. England has been hit by "freak" snowstorms at Easter again, yawn... but Jambeans did build her first snowman with daddy so that made it pretty cool.

Boyfried's 2 weeks' of holiday end today and he's back to work tomorrow. Boo hiss. I guess that means my time being a babymomma at home starts properly then. It hasn't really struck me until now what it's going to be like, I just hope I don't get lonely and bored, which can easily happen. I suppose I'm not really worrying about it today because my mum has got some holiday she needs to use up so is coming to visit for another couple of days so I will have company.

Sis came round on Easter Saturday, and we did our big roast and cake pig out then, and she and I were silly all day. She invented this game where you draw out famous film characters or scenes on the Super Scribbler and let everyone guess what it is, and we thought it was brilliant and did lots of crap drawings, and laughed and laughed and laughed like silly buggers. Then bf decided he had become a professional meteorologist overnight, and after taking a 2 second look at a satellite map, decided the snow and rain would clear for long enough for us to go for a walk, but inevitably it did snow and rain and sis and I were moaning and swearing under our breath and then sort-of-laughing some more, but bf and Jambeans loved it, and F-beans just slept through like a good bub.

If was bf's birthday on Friday - he turned 35 and looks younger but he still did the obligatory harrumphing about getting old. I had no idea what to get him - normally there's a thing that I know he could do with and I get him a nice one of those, but this year he's turned into the man who has everything. So I made him a little voucher booklet of pink passes for him to redeem over the year. Nothing too fancy - just 3 passes, 1 for a night off, 1 for a dinner date with me, 1 for a homemade cake. I got a bit stressed and stroppy the day before his birthday because I left the half finished 'artwork' (if you could call some text boxes in power point 'artwork') on the pooter screen and I'm sure he had a glimpse, not on purpose mind you, but it probably ruined the surprise anyway.

Hang on, I DID get him a thing... and I totally forgot. I have some brand new cufflinks for him upstairs. I better go and give them to him now. I have a brain like a sieve these days...

Tuesday 18 March 2008

Monday 17 March 2008

My Clever Sister

My utterly clever and brilliant sister has a new job. A mere 20 minutes commute from her front door. HURRAH.

Sis - if you are reading - sounds like a perfick opportunity to get home on time, to go out in the evenings and find a luffly un-married boyfried.

Covered in baby sick

F-beans has started to get quite a lot of reflux, which means my back and shoulders are permanently covered in baby sick.

Niiiiiiiiiiice.

I am the North London Triv Queen

Trailing in the first half by a miserable 4 pies, the girlfriend made a stunning recovery to beat the Boyfried YET AGAIN at Triv. That's 2 victories in a row now. How long can the run of good fortune continue???

ps - must make a wee mention of thanks to the bf for being extremely gracious in defeat. no way would i have endured my victory dance with such good grace...

Wednesday 12 March 2008

First drops of formula

The bottle feeding has been going quite well. It's been about a week now and F-beans drinks quite happily from both breast and bottle. Since the bf has been home he has been giving the bub a night time bottle feed at around 10.30pm while I am in bed slowly drifting into a coma, and that helps me feel less tired. The thing that is really hard though is expressing enough milk during the day so he can have his night time feed of 120ml. And I've totally given up any hope of being able to stockpile any EBM in the fridge in case I get a pink pass one day.

Soooo, we bought a bit of formula to bulk up the EBM bottle. To my amazement the bf actually suggested it - I thought he would be dead against - but we gave EBM/formula mix to the bub last night and he drank it OK.

So it's all progressing well. The next part of the plan is for the bottle feed at night to act as the 'knockout' feed and make the bub sleep for at least 4 hours, but preferably 5 or 6. Hasn't worked at all so far, but I live in hope :-)

Surrounded by paraphernalia

Apparently breastfeeding is supposed to involve less 'stuff' than bottle feeding but I find myself surrounded by nipple guards, breast pads, mussies (at least 2 - 1 to tuck into my bra to catch the milk that drips out of the nipple guard, 1 over my shoulder for burping), mobile phone to time the feed, pen and paper to note it down, various cushions and pillows, a book and/or remote controls.

It's just too much stuff.

Tuesday 11 March 2008

Still knackered but warm and fuzzy has returned

The bf has another 2 weeks off work so I'm happy again. Still dog tired, but defo happy again, and have found myself gazing tenderly at the Felix bub's lovely face during night feeding time and reminding myself that being a babymomma again has its perks.

Jasmine woke up in the middle of the night again in a right state, and would not calm down and go back to bed. Bf whisked her downstairs for a spot of teletubbies (to which we are all now addicted) and it seemed to work... but only for as long as the programme lasted. In the end it took about 2-3 hours to settle her.

Which means we got less kip than usual and spent the day totally spaced. But it has meant we've been laughing ourselves silly at the stupidest things. Like Mitchell and Webb's Cheesoid sketch, or the lady on Crufts' HUGE boobs.

Goes to show how much easier everything is when you're not experiencing it on your own.

Sunday 9 March 2008

Is this rock bottom?

So the good news about this week just gone is that I'm recovering nicely from the op - soreness has subsided and I'm much more mobile and able to do things for myself. The excess glue from around the wound (no stitches this time - some new-fangled superglue instead) is beginning to come loose as the doctor said it would. I was told to rub my tummy well in the shower and let it come off, but to be honest it comes off more easily when it's dry. The bits that come off look like a cross between dead skin and copydex - mmmmmm, nice - and I've started to indulge in slightly disgusting, childlike behaviour by seeing how long a piece I can peel off before it makes me wince.

The bad news about this week just gone is just about everything else. The bf's meagre two weeks of pat leave finished oh so quickly, so he went back to work last week. My mum very graciously took some time off her work to come and stay and help out while I was still recovering. Unfortunately her visit coincided with me hitting the fed up button as the realities of what my life will be like feeding on demand for the next few months begin to sink in and I've just acted like a stressed out bitch to her for the best part of a week.

On a normal day I'm pretty obsessive about keeping my household in good order, but absolute control freakery has taken over since Felix was born (not a new thing - it was much the same after Jasmine too) so in true Monica Gellar style I have been completely and utterly anal about how to handle baby/help me breastfeed/ clean stuff up/ wash things/ stack stuff/ tidy up/place things/ do pretty much anything and everything. I've also been a bit of a Nazi about when to do it. ie IMMEDIATELY. NOW. PREFERABLY YESTERDAY. As opposed to the saccharine world of American sitcom, however, there is absolutely nothing funny about my control freakery, and I am quite relentless in my "requests" for stuff to get done "properly" so I wasn't the easiest person for my Mum to be around. And that's putting it politely.

But what made me particularly snappy and stressed last week was my continuing sense of concern, anxiety and guilt about any negative impact that Felix' arrival into our home might be having on Jasmine. I actually think she's very cool with it all, and is handling the change just fine, so my worrying about it all is taking more of a toll on me than it is on her. In all honesty it's mainly a drama that is playing out in my head and nowhere else, because if I entertain the merest thought that something I am doing might lead Jasmine to feel a bit neglected or left out then it simply breaks my heart, and I can't deal with that feeling. What it does mean is that I try to overcompensate by lavishing attention on Jasmine when I can, which is not very often because I'm knackered all the time, so I expect absolutely everyone else (aka my mum) to be equally focused on her when they're here. This is particularly true when I'm feeding Felix, which is just about always, so instead of feeling calm and relaxed and enjoying it, as I'm supposed to, I just feel tense and edgy and wired about how Jasmine feels seeing me feed him all the time. So I try and feed Felix and at the same time talk to Jasmine or read books with her, which is exhausting and difficult, so when someone else is here, aka my mum, I just end up barking instructions at her to get on the floor and dedicate some quality playing time to Jasmine. Which of course Jasmine doesn't always need and my mum doesn't always want to (or indeed have to) do. And it all just makes me feel more and more stressesd.

Everything came to a head last Thursday. Jasmine had a crappy cold and was being particularly clingy. She gave her cold to my mum and me. I was still pissed off with my mum for no good resason. And obviously I was dog tired, not having got used to snatching a couple of hours sleep here and there to last me through. The bf came home quite tired and scratchy and we snapped at each other over "do you want dinner on a plate? or bowl?". Apparently, I was "nagging" over the plate or bowl question. Which I really don't think I was, but I'm allowing for the fact that I could have been because the thing about being utterly exhausted is that every fibre of your being is so focused on getting through the rest of the day and hoping, praying, dreaming that you might be able to go to bed soon that you have absolutely no grip on what you're saying, how you're saying it or how you come across. And your emotions are terribly raw, and everything seems more intense than normal.

So when the bf said the N word (nagging) something inside just snapped. First I felt super angry, with both him and my mum, for being the two closest people to me and for being right there in the house with me and yet having absolutely no idea about how my life wasn't covered in a rosy, glowing, new-baby-hue, but was more akin to a solitary living hell in which everyone else got time to be normal and do normal things like read books and check email and play games and watch TV and sleep, but where I was exempt from those rules and just got to look after children, do housework and generally feel like shit.

Then pretty soon after that the anger turned into doubt and a total loss of self confidence. Over the belief that it was probably me and not them, and that I probably had been acting like a bitch to my mum without her deserving it, and that I probably had snapped plate or bowl at the boyfried unncessarily and then that appallingly destructive feeling of self pity mingled with self loathing washed over me terribly. And the tears came soon after that.

But they didn't come over dinner, or during Jambeans' bed time because I managed to stuff them back in, but they started flowing pretty heavily as soon as I was on my own - which happened to be when I was giving Felix his next feed. So there I was, sitting alone on my bed, in the dark, holding a two week old baby, and hating myself, hating my life, feeling alone and like nobody close to me understood what I was going through or why I was so miserable, all rounded off with a heavy dose of guilt that my negative feelings were all going to rub off on the bub. I was physically exhausted, emotionally spent, and I remember asking myself "Is this rock bottom?"

Which I guess it was. I felt so awful about how I had been treating everyone, and convinced that I was being a total bitch all the time (which I probably wasn't - it's just that I had no grip on reality) that on Friday I fessed up to my mum, amid yet more tears, about how shit I felt about being a nasty, snappy, bossy cow to her all week and about how I didn't feel in control of myself at all and that behaving like that made me not like myself at all.

And then she did the best thing - the thing that only mums can do.

She gave me a big cuddle and made it all right again.

So then we had a chat about everything, and she gave me lots of emotional support and I started to feel better about everything.

That's not to say that it hasn't continued to be fucking difficult. My cold is a bit of a stinker and is making it hard for me to sleep even when I do have the chance. And in the few days that have passed since Mum went home I've still found it hard to cope with how desperately lonely and boring breastfeeding round the clock can be (not to mention extremely painful on the nipples).

And when I'm at the beck and call of a small baby who doesn't understand anything than his constant need for food, sleep and new nappies, irrespective of what my needs are, then I have felt extremely resentful towards the other adults around me, namely the bf. And I know that's not particularly fair, but I feel it anyway, and then I waste valuable sleeping time calculating how much sleep he gets a night (ca. 6.5 continuous hours) compared to me (average 4.5 hours in 90 minute shifts) and I hate how still finds time to do his hobbies (ie reading, gaming or tinkering with the pooter) when I still haven't read a Heat amgazine that I bought 4 days ago, and even when I do get round to it then even looking at the pictures feels like a real challenge.

But generally, I do feel better and am beginning to enjoy the new mum thing again and I will get easier.

Tuesday 4 March 2008

Feeling hopeful

My one mission for Felix is for him to drink from a bottle - something we never managed to encourage Jambeans to do, despite numerous attempts. We used to joke we bought enough different shaped bottles and teats to open a shop. Well, the shop has come in handy and yesterday we offered Felix some EBM from a breast-shaped bottle that I have been hanging all my hopes on. A wonder-bottle.


The good news is that he guzzled all 70ml of it in about a minute. It was like watching someone down a pint.


So I started feeling quite hopeful and immediately imagined the perfect future where Felix would take to the bottle with zero fuss, and would switch between that and breast quite happily. Whereas the voice of reason, aka boyfried, kept saying 'Jambeans guzzled her first bottle like that, and look what happened' and then, slightly worriedly, 'if he rejects the breast, then I suppose it means formula from this age.' Inevitably, I got all snappy and pleaded with him to indulge me and my perfect future visions just for one night.

The not-so-good-news is that we had enough EBM stockpiled for Jambeans to last us forever, whereas to bottle feed Felix the way we want to involves me expressing milk. More time, more hassle, more sore boobs etc.


But defo worth it if it means Felix will drink from a bottle...

Saturday 1 March 2008

Two steps forward, one step back

I was recovering super well from the op, so last Monday, merely one week after Felix was sprung from my tummy, I suggested an outing to the Temple of Carluccio in Brent Cross. So we bundled the F-bean into the car and set off for a potter, some damn fine Italian food and a wee bit of retail therapy. Admittedly I felt tired before I got there, and I was kind of shuffling but I had no other sign to tell me that I was overdoing it...

Until the evening, when my tummy and scar area got really sore. Then, when I tried to stand up I experienced a prickling and intense burning pain that was so severe I couldn't stop myself from crying out. I couldn't move for fear of the sensation returning - it felt really hot and my first thought was that I was bleeding from my scar, and then I thought it must be really bad bruising, but a quick examination from Doctor Boyfried showed me that whatever pain I was experiencing was all on the inside, rather than at the surface of my skin.

So the pain kept coming back intermittently, and I kept crying out, and then I started crying because I was totally bricking myself - fearing all sorts of internal-ER-disaster-type-shennanigans - but even though I was in total agony and could barely move for pain, the fact that I wasn't bleeding was the only thing that stopped me from urging bf to bundle up the kiddiwinks and rush me to A&E.

We rode out the night, and bf helped me out with the bub-feeding duties and I still felt sore on Tuesday but thankfully there no more burning pain. So since then I've been attempting total bed rest, which means my only tasks are to feed Felix and get myself washed and dressed in the morning. Bf has been chief housewife and Jambeans-after-looker and Grandma arrived yesterday to meet the bub and lend a hand, which has been great.

But I am rather bored. And I miss playing with Jambeans. And she only wants Grandma - who she called 'Mamgar' and Daddy (in that order) for cuddles, so I'm feeling guilty for not being able to spend enough time with her, and a bit put out that I am number 3 on the list.