Eeeuuuuwww poo

So breastmilk poo is ok - yellow, mustardy, liquidy, smells a bit like stale breastmilk. Only downside is after a while you get a whiff of your breast pad and go, hmmm, smells a bit like baby poo...

Breastmilk to solids poo is also ok. Looks like what you put in - orange, carroty. Soft, like dough. Easy to clean.

Formula poo on the other hand is the most revolting substance on the planet. OMG is it smelly. OMG is it sticky. So sticky it takes half a pack of wipes. And how come it goes in so milky white and comes out so dark brown? Did I mention how smelly it is? In short: Makes. Me. Want. To. Gag.

Breakfast of Champions

I'm rubbish at eating breakfast, always have been, but in recent years I've been getting pretty good at making sure I eat a decent breakfast every day. This morning though the usual toast or cereal option at the ridiculously early hour of the morning just didn't appeal. So on I potter, have a cup of tea, feed babies, dress toddlers, sort stuff out, and then whoops! before I realise, half a packet of biscuits has been munched and it's not even 9 o'clock.

Finchley: The New Roswell?

In the dead of the night bf and I were awoken by a scary loud, whooshing noise right outside our house. I figured Ferrari/ car thief/ juvenile delinquents. Bf reckons on a military helicopter. Now I'm on a UFO/ X-files track - it was that loud and whooshy.

Babies are just fab

Felix is just getting cuter and cuter. He's all chubby and smily and cooey and babbly and loves to grab his feet and rock from side to side and is all tickly and giggly and luffly luffly luffly luffly luffly

New generation, new words

Jambeans wanted a song yesterday. I was getting ready to sing her Peter Rabbit (peee-ter-rab-bit's-got-a-fly-up-on-his-nose etc.. to the tune of 'John Brown's Body') but she got all angry and started pointing at the dock furiously going "Daddy. Bag. Daddy. Bag..." then, pronounced beautifully, "Eye. Pod"

Old friends. Sitting on a park bench like bookends.

So whilst the whole weaning drama was playing out, Jambeans was also sleeping terribly. For a couple of nights in a row she'd wake up, scream for her mum or dad, wouldn't settle, then we'd bring her into our bed where she would rouse two or three times a night and moan and moan and moan and mooaaann. By Wednesday morning we were totally shattered and scratchy.

But then, Ely, aka my Fairy Godmother cum Guardian Angel cum Bestest Friend in the Whole Wide World descended on our house in a puff of magic dust with Pippa and Zoe (who is possibly The Loveliest Smiliest Warmest Happiest Child In The Whole Wide World) and of course Ted the Dog, and they totally cheered me up.

They stayed for a couple of nights. Daytimes have been filled with toys and stories and playing and farm trips and cups of tea and gossiping. At night time Jambeans slept in our bed and was an absolute angel. Felix continues to drink quite contentedly from a bottle and is also sleeping through again.

I adore spending time with Ely. It's always bathed in a calm glow of warmth and familiarity. There is also something incredibly touching about spending time with your childhood friends and then seeing your children play together a generation on.

That whily window cleaner came...

...a week early, but I'll forgive. He's not due till 12th November now - I'll be watching that calendar like a hawk. He also told me he's going to Thailand for a month in January. I just kept staring at the gap where his two front teeth should be, willing him to go away and thinking "Eeeeeeuuuwwww I dread to think what you get up to there."

Weaning diary notes #2 - cold turkey day

Sun 23.17:
Felix rolled over onto his tummy in his sleep. Started screaming. Full breastfeed.

Mon 01:00:
Same thing happened again. Short burst of booby milk.

Mon 02.50 - 04.00:
Felix rolled over again. We righted him, twice, then let him cry himself to sleep for 1 hour and 10 minutes. It is at some point while he was screaming that I decided we go cold turkey from now.

Mon 07.30:
Felix wakes. Daddy offers bottle nonchalantly. Squealibeans Rejects Bottle. I am totally on edge, assuming he is a bomb about to go off.

Mon 11.00:
Whimpering grows but he's nowhere near frantic. After some initial resistance bf bottle-feeds him 110ml of EBM/formula mix.

WOW! We are amazed. Clearly, he can still drink from a bottle!!

Mon 1pm:
Whimpering grows again, but still not frantic. Felix drinks another 70ml EBM/formula mix from a bottle.

Mon 14.50:
After persistent complaining since his last feed Felix takes another 110ml. Another small step forward. Had been feeling very antsy up to this point, but again, calm and hopefulness is restored.

Mon 17.10:
Felix drinks 110ml, given to him by his mum.

Mon 19.00:
120ml, again given by mum. He finishes the bottle. I wish I had put more milk in.

Total Monday: 520ml.

Tues some heinous hour of night:
Felix woke, hungry and screaming. After 45 mins I caved in and give him 170ml from a bottle.

Tues 09.00:
150ml from bottle.

Tues 11.30:
130ml from bottle.

Which brings us up to now.

Is it safe to say he's weaned now? Could it really be that quick? After all our anxiety, surely it should be a lot more painful? It makes me feel stupid for worrying so much. Anyway, the plan is really to establish him on milk for a few days, then go back to giving him some solids too and a few sips from the cup. I've been pumping the boobs to ease the pain, and just need to reduce the frequency and volume I express each time. Then we'll increase the formula to EBM ratio till it's totally formula. All eminently doable.

At some point we need to make sure he's full enough during the days so he can go back to sleeping through the night again. Aaarrrgghhhh at the thought of sleep training again. At least there is something left for me to worry about.

Operation Cold Turkey starts earlier than expected

As if snuffles, teething, cup training, weaning onto solids and me cutting back the booby milk weren't enough, Felix started to roll over onto his tummy. It's a huge developmental milestone... only he started doing it in the middle of the night. Every 90 minutes to be precise.

Doubtless after his day of solids-training, he hadn't eaten enough and was unsettled and HUNGRY, which made him thrash about and madly suck his fist, which made him roll over. Lots. Which made him scream. Lots. Poor little mite, it's understandable.

But despite that, in my exhausted, I-can't-take-much-more-of-this stupor I decided, gulp, that we couldn't have Felix being that hungry in the night. Going cold turkey on the breastfeeding front and bottle feeding only for Felix would have to start ASAP.

Decision reached, and a plan is developed.

After a positive start on the weaning front, the "dropping one feed at a time" plan is now getting really boring and totally frustrating. It would be OK...:

(a) ...if we had really regular feeds to begin. But we don't. Felix is fed on demand and that suits me just fine. The book is normally a really good source of advice on most aspects of baby-rearing, but lets me down this time by suggesting we establish some kind of feeding regularity before we start the slow weaning process. A quick flick to the notes on 'routines' tells me what I already know - that it can take 2 days to 2 months to establish regular feeding patterns. So I have neither the time nor the inclination.

(b) ...if we could swap a breast feed for a bottle, but Felix has rejected the bottle. We tried pretty hard since June to get him to accept it again but with no success. It was tiring for the bf and traumatic for me (see e). The only thing that made it better was the decision to give it up and try alternatives.

(c) ...if Felix were developmentally ready for the alternatives, aka drinking from the cup alternated with solid food. On the cup front both my trusty sources (Babycentre and the aforementioned book) recommend trying without a spout first but tipping the cup against his mouth and letting the baby learn how to sip. This is what we did with Jambeans so I've been happily doing it again with Felix. This time round I consult the book in a little more detail and find this gem: whilst babies as young as Felix are ready for the cup, I shouldn't expect him to drink more than a couple of fluid oz at a time. A penny drops - he has been doing this quite well but I was expecting him to ramp up the volumes quite quickly and had been getting frustrated when I couldn't see any more progress. It turns out he's doing fine with the cup training, but the cup isn't a reliable alternate source of milk to the boobs...

(d) ...if Felix ate more solids. At the same age Jambeans couldn't gobble the solids up fast enough. It was amazing how quickly she went from her first tentative spoonfuls to eating loads of veggies a day, often more than me. But she was premature, and they often take to solids very early, and every baby is different. But even though weaning her was totally stressful it did mean we knew she would be able to eat something when she started nursery, and we could keep her fluid level up with very runny rice porridge. After a seemingly good start it turns out Felix really hasn't taken to rice porridge at all.

(e) ...if we had a positive memory of weaning Jasmine. We did it the slow way with her too, replacing a nursing with a solid meal and sips from the cup. She took to solids super early and super fast, but any attempts to get milk down her were painful and we tried pretty much every tip, trick, hint, vessel and program there is. They all failed. My return to work deadline was looming. I hadn't had an hour to myself for 9 months. Jasmine wouldn't drink independently. I was crying quite a lot. It was totally horrible.

So bf and I talk this all over after his day of looking after the bub. And it goes a bit like this:

1) Bf feels that the slow method means it is too easy for the bub to insist on booby milk and too easy for the mum to give in and try solids/alternatives at the next feed. He is totally right.

2) Bf suggests going cold turkey on the boobs and replacing it with solids/cup. I feel fear. I don't want to have another child who doesn't drink enough milk. If he turns out like Jambeans there will always be the worry at the back of our minds that he simply isn't getting enough calcium in his diet. I suggest we try cold turkey, but with the bottle.

3) Bf feels fear. He doesn't believe Felix is capable of drinking from the bottle any more - that he has lost the technique.

4) True to bf's advice of having a confident attitude I spout some bullshit about having a 'vision' of Felix drinking milk from a bottle, sipping happily from a cup and eating solids when he wants. I talk more crap about 'believing in the vision' and that we have to 'believe that Felix can do what it takes to get there.'

5) I surprise myself by believing what I say. Bf surprises me more by saying 'OK. No time like the present. Lets start tomorrow.'

6) Reassuringly, I return to cowardly form and say I need time to get my head round the idea of not nursing Felix any more, so lets start next week.

But the good news is, we have a plan.

A scary plan, but a good plan nevertheless.

A giggly afternoon

Sunday. We're aiming for Felix ultimately to nurse in the morning and evenings only, so since bf is around he's in charge of the boy, and I'm in charge of the girl for the day. It feels to the bf that most of the day is spent encouraging Felix to eat. He eats some solids, not a huge amount, but it goes down ok I guess. He's still not eager for the cup.

I, on the other hand, get to play with Jasmine. We go for a long, cheery walk and end up in a cafe eating beans on toast and watching the womens' gymnastics - uneven bars - on a plasma. Jasmine is on great form, and mumbles 'legs, round and round' over and over while giggling hysterically as I spoon beans into her. It feels great to be bub-free for a while and I realise how much I have missed spending quality time with my daughter.

Angry with the BBC and still prone to Olympic bouts of sentimentality

It turns out that the opening ceremony of the Olympics was bloody amazing. I am furious to have missed it. So angry I actually spent a sleepless hour fulminating at the BBC's highlights coverage, which showed us only about 10 minutes of fantastic opening ceremony, 10 minutes of crap speeches and boring processions of athletes, 20 minutes of footage on the British Olympic hopefuls (as if...) and a whole load of Sue Barker and other uninspiring presenters filling the rest of the time.

What makes me angrier, is that I could have watched it live, but chose not to, and also elected not to Sky+ it either, assuming that the highlights coverage wouldn't cut out any of the best bits. I am a BBC stalwart - I would happily pay double for the licence fee so I never thought I would say this, but... The BBC are Bastards.

Anyway, my blubcount is rising. I cried at the Olympics twice on the first day, once on day 2 and twice already on day 3 (a Russian and a Georgian hug on the podium - oh the poignancy). I am so soft it's humiliating.

Repeat 20 times a day: I am NOT a failure of a mum

that nagging anxiety about weaning/ bottle rejection/ cup training that i've been desperately trying to control for the last month or so is really beginning to surface. as a result i was feeling quite flat and low about it all last night. talked to the boyfried who told me that a unconfident attitude was part of the problem. he's doubtless right but it made me angry and upset, because it was (supposedly) practical advice but didn't give me any indication as to when and how i should deal with feeding felix during the day.

my mum is the same when i try to talk to her. she has no practical advice to offer but just says "don't worry." it makes me angry because all i really want is for my nearest and dearest to acknowledge how worried i am, that my worries are founded and to empathise with how shit i feel.

sometimes with my mum it's like she assumes felix will wean by himself, and ignores all the effort i have to put in to make it happen. it's hard to convey how very very very frustratingly depressing it is when all your best efforts show absolutely no result day in day out. i'm really not used to failure. and failing twice at the same thing is harder to bear.

so taking bf's advice on board that i needed to change my attitude i recoursed to good ole Google and landed at Berkeley Parents Network, where reassuringly there is a page full of mums (rather, moms) with the exact same problem.

it made me feel:
a) that i'm not the only mum in the world who has to wean to a very real, fixed deadline
b) it's not my fault if the baby won't drink from a bottle - some babies just won't take anything but booby milk from their mums aka i'm not a failure
c) there is no magic answer and babies are unpredictable, so my making it all up as i go along is actually ok.
d) we might have to let felix get very, very hungry indeed
d) he WILL cry if we do that. it WILL be difficult. but it might just work

Felix does Shakespeare

Felix is not a well bunny. His snuffles are getting worse, and in the mornings he is phlegmy and has a blocked nose. I think also teething is hurting quite a lot. The last couple of days he has been fine one minute, then has been crying his poor wee heart out the next and is all red and puffy-eyed and looks totally miserable. He was up twice last night, which is unusual, and would only settle with mucho cuddles. And when he's Ok he's basically chewing chewing frantically chewing anything. Often his fingers but mainly my shoulder, my cheek, my fingers, my arm, my trouser leg, even my chin and often (wince now) my nipple. I imagine him whispering under his breath "The pound of flesh I demand of her is dearly bought, 'tis mine, and I will have it"

Weaning diary notes #1

Felix had a wee burst of booby milk this morning at 7.30am; then a decent burst at 8.30am; then a wee top up at 10am, just before his snooze. So it gets to 11.30am and I figure it's 3 hours since his last decent meal, a good gap, but he's had that wee top up in between so he shouldn't be frantically hungry. Into the Bumbo he goes, bibs are attached, food and drink are at the ready.

First up is the cup. I try for about 5 minutes but nothing doing. I switch to cauliflower and broccoli puree and spend 10 minutes trying to get him to eat. He's happy but clearly not interested so I do the sensible thing and stop trying to feed him at all. Maybe his 'top up' was actually enough to keep him going for much longer.

It's now 1.20pm - over 3 hours since he ate or drank anything - and he's in the Bumbo, again, refusing to drink from the cup entirely, again. I try to make him smile hoping to get some milk into him while his mouth his open, but that doesn't arouse his interest either. I end up splashing oodles of the stuff everywhere. Everywhere, that is, except into his mouth. Sigh.

Decide to be patient. Switch to puree. Maybe 5-6 tiny spoonfuls go in, but it takes 15 minutes. At this point he starts to whine and cry, and I know it's a hungry cry. Grim determination sets in. He is going to finish his veggies at any rate I tell myself. I know he can do that - he's eaten quite greedily before, he can do it now. So there I go, ladling tiny quantities into him every time he opens his mouth to cry. So he cries harder, and I ladle more in. I see it gather in his mouth and wonder if he's going to gag and vomit it all out, but he does eat it. He just doesn't eat it willingly. By now he's eaten maybe half his veggies. There were only 2 tablespoonfuls to begin with, i.e. a pethetic amount. But I am feeling OK and determined and not affected by his crying and imploring looks to stop torturing him. Only then, his crying changes tone and becomes insistent, pleading, and pained, and he starts trying to jerk out of his seat so I can't direct the food into his mouth properly. And I time it, to see how long I can withstand this. And it's only 3 minutes before I give in.

I breastfeed him on the sofa and tell myself "You are so weak" and then the Good Cop voice goes "but he's not well, and is teething, and was up twice last night screaming his lungs out in pain, and he's just a baaaaby..."

Total Olympics blubdown

So I'm on the sofa feeding the bub and I flick the TV on to catch the Olympics opening ceremony, and I've only been watching for about 2 minutes and it's the usual crap, with some cute little girl on a wire doing some weird cycling movement with her legs, and some dude on a piano who is probably rather good, and a dove made out of humans and Huw Edwards wittering on and on and on and I start crying Goddammit. What is it with me and the Olympics? All that sentimental pap? Why does it always make me blub like the world is coming to an end?

We are not alone

Just found this from a poppablogger, and it made me laugh like a loon.

Covered in slobber and other stuff

Just when you think the teething can't get any worse Felix steps it up a gear. He is still using me as a giant teether so I am covered in slobber from my fingers, up my arms, all over my neck and up to my cheeks. I am already sweaty from our long walk, and add to that all the snot and sneezes plus the usual detritus from feeding them both and I'm basically totally disgusting.

Still no sign of an actual tooth though.

Feeling totally clueless - addendum

Typical. So by the time the milk has cooled Felix is totally frantic and crying and there's no way I'm going to be able to feed him anything, and I am convinced he needs to do a poo, because he's straining and his little face is going red, so I take him to the sofa and try and distract him with a cuddle and some raspberry-blowing action on the tummy but he's still crying, now really insistently, and whaddya know? He IS hungry and gobbles gobbles gobbles gobbles some booby milk like he's never been fed before.

How totally frustrating.

Feeling totally clueless

So this weaning thing, well it involves both weaning onto solids - going okaay I guess, and weaning off the breast and onto formula from a bottle or cup - going very slowly. Felix drank 60ml from his Doidy cup today, but it took about 25 mins. This is either a fantastic result, or, seeing as he should be drinking about 600ml a day and needs to be doing it independently in about 6 weeks' time when he starts nursery, could mean we're heading slowly towards total disaster.



But the main point is, I really haven't a clue what I'm doing. I just muddle along without a plan. I'm not the kind of mum who gets up in the morning and goes, Right! Today we're going to drop feed (a) and replace it with a cup feed of x ml and then drop feed (b) and replace it with y oz of solids and then we'll increase it all by z over the next c weeks... I don't have regular feeds to begin with, so I just sort of make it up as I go along.

The result is mainly that Felix is plonked in the Bumbo, which can be at any time of the day, and might be offered a cup feed, or some solids, or a combination of both. Since I'm trying to feed him when he is hungry but before he gets too frantically hungry, I'm going by the clock, i.e. time elapsed since he last ate or drank anything, but I can never be sure I've timed it right when I try to feed him. Since it's such a painfully slow process anyway and it's always accompanied by some crying, moany-type noises it's hard to tell whether he's not sufficiently hungry and is rejecting what I have to offer him, or is just taking his time and trying to get the hang of it. (Or, now I see it in writing, the third option is that he is hungry but is still rejecting what I have to offer him because he wants boobs.) I've had various success, sometimes I persist and he does gobble a load of food up, and sometimes I persist only for Felix to vomit up what seems like an entire bowl of pureed veggies seconds later. And very often I tell myself that I'm just going to feed him solids and try and get him to drink from a cup and then make him go hungry for the next 2 hours only to cave in to his appeals and top him up with booby milk half an hour later.

So he's in his Bumbo right now, and has been eating a decent sized blob of foul-smelling carrot and broccoli puree, but it's going down really slowly and at the same time he is making big time whiny crying yelpy moany type noises. And they could mean "I'm so hungry this isn't doing it for me right now, give me BOOOOBS" and they could mean "I'm really not comfortable in this seat but I reckon I could still eat some more veggie slush" and they could mean "I'm not hungry and not interested" but right now, and for most of the day, they've sounded like "I want to do a big poo". I'm worried that I translate all his noises as "I want to do a big poo" but he, well, strains, and has done three today already so I can't be that far off the mark. But he has been sipping at some water from the Doidy quite eagerly, so I'm also wondering whether he's actually saying "Give me a decent drink goddammit to wash this thick gloop down with" so I've made some formula and have left him a wee while for it to cool and brain dump all my inconfidence onto the blog.

Who gives a stuff about Carol?

So there's a big brouhaha about Carol Vorderman announcing she's leaving Countdown because they tried to make her take a big pay cut yaaawn and it's off air supposedly to make way for Channel 4 Racing yaaaaawn but quite frankly I don't care just BRING IT BACK. It's the format we love, not the quietly smug and gratingly chirpy presenters. You could put a blow up doll in the place of Carol and it would still be a great show. Just put it back on pleeaase. I need my Countdown fix.

Pointer Sisters to the Rescue

Jambeans and I have taken to putting Jump on really loud and doing crazy dancing in the living room.

Getting Felix to sleep through - executive summary

So Felix is consistently sleeping through somewhere between 9 and 11 hours every night. He doesn't always go to bed easily, sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and needs to settle himself back again, and often it's nearer 9 hours than the desired 11 BUT the important thing of note is that I am getting decent kip, at last, and I think I've sort of stopped moaning about it. But it does beg the question - why do I still feel so tired?

Above average

Jambeans is still poorly, so I took her to the doctor's today. Apparently the average frequency of illness for a child aged 0-5 is once every 6 weeks. I reckon Jasmine gets sick about every 4 weeks. What the GP wasn't able to tell me was whether the duration (ages) or severity (high) of her illnesses were something to worry about or take further. I have no basis for judging how ill she is at any given time - something in me is blind to it, and I always assume she'll be ok. I've always been like that - ignoring the signs and assuming they will go away (like when I was sick for 2 days when pregnant but it was actually premature labour, or when I was puking for weeks before I went to hospital with acute pancreatitis - both times other people had to intervene to get me to a hospital) but both my mum and the bf say she's close to critically ill when she's sick, so I figure they must know what they're talking about.

Apparently the important thing to look for is whether she gets better in between illnesses, which Jambeans certainly does. These little words of GP wisdom helped. I feel less guilty for not taking Jambeans to the doctor every time she gets sick, but for waiting for her to ride it out.

The GP also sympathised with how wearing it is for a parent to care for a child who is ill so frequently, demonstrating to me that medics are actually human beings too. I asked for a referral letter to Jambeans' peadiatrician anyway. He's very good, and I think a visit to him, if only just to chat, may help the bf stop worriyng about Jambeans which in turn may help me stop worrying about the bf worrying.

It's tough when she's not well - it's tiring and we get scratchy with each other. We talked about it last night. I said "we always seem to argue when Jasmine is ill." He turned to me and said simply "Because it's stressful." Never a truer word...