This vlog is intended for future me, the next time I have a baby. Because there are certain things that are just far too easy to forget. Particularly when it comes to buying certain things for babies. I now trust that future Zoey will pay close attention and not you know, ignore me entirely.
Attention Future Zoey
Posted on November 1, 2011 5 Comments
The Easy Baby and the Spirited Toddler
Posted on June 23, 2011 10 Comments
I have an easy baby. There, I said it. She goes to sleep easily and without my help. Sure she has an unsettled period in the afternoon but I pop her in the sling and she goes to sleep. Last night she had trouble getting to sleep probably because she’s got a bit of my cold but I took her into bed with me and she happily went to sleep. She doesn’t need to be held all the time. She hangs out in the bouncer or on her mat or in the swing and when she starts getting upset it means she’s ready for bed. She’s so easy. It might not always be that way, but for now that’s how it is.
Riley is not easy. She pushes against every single boundary. She asks a million questions every day. She has meltdowns whenever something happens that is outside her expectation and she’s rigid in those expectations. The last few weeks she’s starting trying on her whining to see how that fits. She looks at herself in the mirror while she has a tantrum as if it was all part of some grand experiment. She’s starting to give me attitude about every single thing.
Two things happen in this scenario. One is that Piper is so easy, it’s also easy to focus on Riley. Hello, squeaky wheel. The second is that it’s also easy to lose some of my connectedness to Riley because everything is a battle, all the time. Both of these scenarios I choose to guard against.
I choose to cuddle my toddler more, find the delight in how she is such a force of nature and help to manager her emotions when she loses the ability. But I worry about her recent fixation with ‘doing things wrong’ and how upset she becomes if either she or someone else ‘does it wrong’ and her inability to let it go.
I choose to snuggle my baby too. Even when she would probably be just as content on the floor. I practise memorising all her little (and big) expressions because I know how fleeting babydom is. And when I’m in bed, coughing up a lung, I’m comforted by her head on my chest.
And all I can hope is that in the end, I am the person they needed me to be.
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The Good Baby
Posted on April 21, 2011 26 Comments
There’s one question that people ask an awful lot when there’s a newborn about.
Is she a good baby?
Well, I don’t know I haven’t attributed any moral value to her just yet. Of course, I know what they mean. They want to know, does she sleep and does she cry much. Because ‘good’ apparently means a baby that doesn’t inconvenience me too much.
Which is a whole lot of expectation for a little person. And having accepted that having a baby means kissing goodbye to sleep for at least a couple of years, my expectations are just a little bit different. Especially given that Riley still enjoys a fair amount of sleeping in our bed now – we just don’t have to get out of bed to bring her in anymore.
And if there was anything to threaten the ‘good baby’ status, it was the unfortunate garlic incident last night. At the moment Piper pretty much just sleeps during the day and only wakes briefly to be fed. At night, she’s up a bit more and feeds a bit more. Convenient, yes? But I don’t really mind. It gives me the day to spend more focused time with Riley and the night for some exclusive time with Piper. It does however sadly separate me from my true love, sweet sweet sleep.
So after making a delicious cheesy, garlicky potato bake last night I was prepared for the usual night time routine. Sadly that was not to be. She screamed and fussed her way through the night until about 2am when she crashed. At 4am Riley woke up to join the party. And at 5am Josh woke up and let me get back to sleep with Piper until 7am.
The culprit? That delicious potato bake (I think). My rather voracious eater was screaming for a feed but then would scream on the breast as well and generally work herself up into a state. And it all miraculously went back to normal at around 4. So I’m thinking the garlic was to blame. Which is a shame. Because I love garlic. I do, however, love the squishy just a bit more. So there will be no more garlic around here for awhile.
Definite chinks in the good baby armour. Either that or my good baby is actually a vampire baby. And I don’t care about good babies. I care about squishy cheeks, new baby smell, first smiles and beautiful snuggles. Besides, today I discovered my ace in the hole as far as Piper’s screaming/crying was concerned. She calms down just as soon as Riley sings ‘twinkle twinkle’ to her.
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Second. The Easy and The Hard
Posted on April 19, 2011 10 Comments
Some things are easier second time around. Like breastfeeding. Nothing screams success like not taking a baby off your breast to find your own blood pouring out of her mouth. I know. I’ve set the yardstick incredibly low. Other things aren’t easier, they just seem easier. Because I’m not counting the hours between feeds, or how many hours she’s sleeping or worrying about the fact that it is impossible to get her to sleep except by feeding her to sleep.
Some things are harder. Like being acutely aware of how fast time is flying by. How I have to say no to Riley when she wants to sit on my lap because I’m feeding. How even a King size bed can seem small when you’ve got four people in it. Or no longer having the luxury of day naps. Or seeing just how hard my first baby is trying with everything, sometimes in the face of less than patient parents. The last part might have led me on some mama guilt adventures.
But mostly, as I breathe in the every last bit of that new baby smell as I snuggle in bed with Piper or kiss Riley’s squishy cheeks when she sits on my lap, I just feel lucky.
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The Baby Stage
Posted on March 10, 2011 24 Comments
Plenty of people don’t like the baby stage. There’s all kinds of things not to like. The sleep deprivation that causes you to at times be a barely functioning human, hardly even capable of holding an intelligent conversation, or faking one. Then there’s the challenge of even getting out of the house, or showering uninterrupted (or even alone) or trying to comfort them when they just seem inconsolable. Baby’s needs can seem never-ending and they can’t talk to you, so you’re left to struggle on the best you can. Well they communicate just fine, but crying isn’t always the most definitive of mechanisms.
But I love the baby stage. Because it’s simple. It might be hard and even gruelling at times, particularly as far as sleep goes. But you don’t have to worry about discipline or boundaries or an opportunity for teaching or anything else that becomes increasingly necessary as they start to become little people. And let’s face it, once you have a toddler running around the place, the benefit of a baby that doesn’t move at all start to become very obvious.
I’m quite happy to hang on to my babies for as long as possible (including my toddler-sized baby). It’s only a matter of time before she starts pre-school. Although I can see she’s pretty close to being ready, the lure of time to myself is well overshadowed by the unbridled panic of seeing my baby take those first steps away from me and on her own. The fact that there will be times when she will want me to comfort a hurt (physical or emotional) and I won’t be there makes me feel ill. Very ill.
I won’t be rushing the jellybean through their baby stage either. I’m not in a hurry to return to things in my pre-baby life. Not that I didn’t love all of those things or that I don’t occasionally miss a bit of freedom here or there. But I like that my life has changed. That it’s different. That there’s something beyond myself in it. Which is probably why I’m the person who would be quite happy to have lots of babies. And while husband has back-pedalled to 3, I’m sticking with 5. I’m sure this won’t cause any conflict in the future.
Feel free to remind me of this when I’m at the end of my rope at 3am in the morning and the baby won’t go to sleep. It’s only fair.
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You’ll Never Do That With Your Second Child
Posted on March 9, 2011 44 Comments
I heard that a whole lot when Riley was a baby. The tilt of the head. The tut-tutting. The look that not just spoke but screamed, it’s a mistake. And then that simple sentence. ‘You’ll never do that with your second child.’ I guess the theory being that it’s all well and good to spoil an only child rotten but when it comes to more than that you’ll run out of the time, energy and inclination. Which is a fair point. Because on days like yesterday when I am mid toddler meltdown in the waiting room, I have a headache from ‘but why?’ being repeated every 5 seconds and I can literally feel myself scarring poor unsuspecting first-time mothers with each passing second, I often think. Two?! I can barely handle one. Although to be fair, the second won’t be able to move or talk for a long while. A fact vastly under-valued in babies in my opinion.
And given I’m just about to have my second (1-5 weeks depending on how keen the little one is on making their grand entrance) it’s about high time that I say some things that I might have to retract later. Because if I don’t give this baby the opportunity to make an ass out of me, well I’m hardly doing my job as a mother, am I? So here it is – the list of things that apparently I would never do with my second child, according to everyone who felt the need to voice an opinion when Riley was a baby. I have a good memory, baby brain or no baby brain.
1) You just have to let them cry. It’s good for them. It doesn’t hurt. You’ll realise it’s the best way.
2) Breast might be best, but you have to get them on the bottle as soon as possible, otherwise it’s just hard work.
3) You won’t be letting a second baby sleep in your bed for that long
4) It can’t be comfortable carrying them around in a sling. Isn’t she too big for it?
5) You won’t rock your second baby. They have to get used to going to sleep on their own
To which I have only one thing to say to all of the above: watch me.
However there are a few things that I know I will do differently that I could not relate to at all as a first-time mother:
1) I will forget how many weeks my baby is. I often forget how pregnant I am.
2) I will not be able to tell you how much they weigh on any given week.
3) I will not be feeling guilty about feeding to sleep, rocking to sleep or really any method of getting to sleep.
4) I highly doubt I will undertake the same level of baby proofing
5) I hope that I will be less of a stress-head, but this is me we are talking about. I won’t go making promises I can’t keep.
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Pre-Baby Jitters
Posted on January 24, 2011 4 Comments
It seems that my first baby is having some pre-baby jitters. Last night she woke up at about 9pm and came out into the lounge room. It rarely happens, but when it does she’s usually pretty easy to get back to sleep as long as she comes back to bed with us, which I don’t mind. But I was ready to go to bed a bit earlier and was set to leave her and Josh watching some TV before bedtime. When a previously very happy little toddler was reduced to inconsolable tears and screaming “I’ll miss you”. Not that unusual really, at the moment. And I can’t help but think it’s baby related. It’s not just limited to me either. This morning, when she woke up after Josh had gone to work she sobbed into the mattress for a bit when she realised he was gone.
I, on the other hand, am somewhat worryingly without pre-baby jitters although I keep hearing that I should be quietly panicking about the addition of number two. Which means either one of two things, either I’m completely deluded and I’m in for a rude shock or I’ve wandered into some previously undiscovered zen-like state. I’m pretty sure I know which one is more likely.
At least we bought a very comfy feeding chair over the weekend. So my all-nighters can be spent in relative comfort. Although I’ll have to keep a sharp eye on the husband who was so taken with how cozy the chair was has plans to turn it into some kind of tv-sloth chair. I can’t blame him really, it is a very nice chair. But nonetheless, that chair belongs to me until he starts making milk.
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Guest Post @ Scary Mommy
Posted on August 24, 2010 Leave a Comment
I’m guest posting today at Scary Mommy. You can check it out here: New Mother Syndrome.
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Guest Post @ Fat Mum Slim
Posted on August 23, 2010 Leave a Comment
I’m guest posting today at Fat Mum Slim. You can check it out here: The Two of Us.
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34/365 The Blogiversary Edition
Posted on July 6, 2010 5 Comments
This was one of the photos I posted on my first ever post.
Look at that glorious belly and those pudgy arms. It was also one of the first times she went to sleep on her own, mid lunch no less. In some ways she’s so much of a baby in this photo that I hardly recognise her, but in others I still see that little baby face when I look at her now.
We’ve come a long way, her and I. A very long way. And every age is still my favourite.
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