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.