A Tough Week All Round

Oscar, Neil and I have had a challenging few days. We ventured out for a celebratory birthday meal for Neil last Sunday lunchtime, and were feeling pretty elated that we managed to eat three courses (with a knife and fork and everything), have a grown up conversation and get home in time to feed Oscar. Our elation was shortlived, however, when I started to feel ill that evening. I've been suffering with the usual symptoms of food poisoning ever since and have been able to keep down only the plainest of food.
As I'm sure most breastfeeding mums will confirm, whenever something interferes with the food you're able to get through your body it sends you into fits of anxiety about how much nutrition is reaching the baby. I have been particularly on edge this week as Oscar was weighed at my GP's on Monday at his eight-week check (another story) and he has fallen quite a long way off his expected growth curve. So this week I've begun a new odyssey - researching the effects that illness and nutrition has on breastfeeding, and trying to work out which of the predicatably contradicting information I trust and believe. Do I listen to health visitor A, who tells me I need to be gorging myself on cream, butter and eggs in order to satisfy my baby's needs, or breastfeeding counsellor B, who points out that women still manage to breastfeed in famine conditions, and a good supply of complex carbohydrates will suffice? I tend to come down on the side of the latter, which is lucky given the fact that anything with butter and cream in it at the moment will stay around about as long as a hoodie that's just spotted the guy from the Child Support Agency.
As an insurance policy when I was ill we gave Oscar a 'top up' of formula milk after his usual breastfeeds. I was upset at the thought of my little baby drinking anything that wasn't coming from me (the formula is made from cows milk, and last time I looked, Oscar was not in the least bit bovine). But needs must, and as Neil sensibly pointed out, in the real World you have to sometimes make compromises (as I discovered when my 'home birth under the Christmas tree' turned into a 'hospital birth attached to beeping things'). Judging by the fact that Oscar seems to have developed a double chin this week, he's not suffered too much from the effects of this week's less-than-ideal events.

Buddies with Buggies

I feel a bit ashamed to admit that I used to poke fun at the groups of women who congregate in coffee bars all over Southwest London with their babies and buggies. Maybe it's down to karma, but I am now one of those women myself, and I'm very happy to be one too. I met my particular group through the NCT when we did ante-natal classes together, and we have been meeting up atleast once a week ever since. The group is a bit of a lifeline for me - all the babies were born within a few weeks of each other - which means us mums can compare notes on just about everything that is happening to our little bundles of joy as they grow and change. The comparisons are not competitive but comforting - through them I've discovered that Oscar is not the only one who performs strange baby antics - so I would like to say a big thank you to Joanne, Deana, Sarah, Tara, Clare and Lindsey for their kindness, friendship and support.

Angels and Pixies

When we put our son to bed each night, he looks like a little angel – all warm and cosy in a clean sleep suit, smelling like a delicious chocolate bar (we give him a bath and massage him with vanilla scented oil afterwards) and a blissful expression on his face suggesting that he could sleep for at least 8 hours. What seems like a moment later, we’re scooping a cross, sticky, screaming pixie out of his cot and mopping baby sick out of his now very crusty hair with a mountain of muslin squares. By this time he smells like something that Neal’s Yard Dairy may leave out for the bin men. I’m assured by the health visitor that it’s perfectly normal for a baby to spend the night throwing up/squirming/grunting/being very cross indeed, but it still sends me into fits of anxiety every day. Could he choke? Will he get too cold if he makes his baby sleeping bag wet and I don’t notice? Reading baby books seems to make things worse. You would have thought that given that the human race has been successfully raising children for centuries, the so-called ‘baby experts’ (some of which don’t even have their own children) could agree on the basics. But no, each one seems to contradict the others spectacularly. I have read a selection of the full spectrum from the ‘leave them to cry it out – love just harms them’ to the ‘carry them around in a sling until they leave for University, and shove a breast in their mouths 50 times daily, even if you’re in the middle of arranging a mortgage with your bank manager’. My lovely and very wise ante-natal teacher told me to ‘read what you want to believe, and ignore the rest’. But when it’s three in the morning, your baby is screaming like he’s being murdered and you’ve changed his clothes for the fifth time, you don’t really know what you believe in anymore. One of the books on my shelf tells you how to read the cries of your baby. There is a lengthy description of ‘hungry’, ‘cold’, ‘bored’, ‘sick’ and ‘tired’ cries, all of which Percy Thrower would have a hard time mimicking. Oscars cries all sound like this: ‘waaahhhh waaaahhhh waahhhhh’. Oh what an unobservant, bad parent I am! Neil has suggested we make a big baby book bonfire and go back to instinctive parenting. A little more sleep and who knows, I may even start to trust those instincts.
On a brighter note, Oscar is growing well (his newborn clothes are now packed up in the loft) and he’s DEFINITELY smiling – a fact that has been independently verified by the health visitor (as she weighed him yesterday he had a wee on the scales and had a good laugh about it). He may be a little crusty around the edges at times, but I love him so much I think I might pop.