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    Sunday 27 March 2011

    Going it alone

    Some days, like this one, I need someone to call on. Someone to take Jude away from me, if just for a few hours. Many people (increasingly fewer) have family close enough to be able to help out on those days when everything is too much. Our closest family live about 900km away. Not exactly close enough to come to the rescue.

    I got about 4 hours of sleep last night. Between pregnancy symptoms and Jude's recent spate of very bad sleep patterns, I am really feeling the impact of sleep deprivation. So when I gave Jude a cup of milk and he knocked it over on to the floor, and then threw the 2nd cup of milk I gave him on the floor, I really couldn't stop myself from shouting at him and wishing he'd vanish and leave me the hell alone.

    It's not a great feeling, as a mum, to wish your child was anywhere but home. I'm sure I'm not the first to feel this way and I won't be the last, but where is help when I need it?

    Saturday 26 March 2011

    Jude the changeling

    My mind is reeling. What has happened to my perfect son? In the last 3 days he has become unsettled, grumpy and mean. I have a great popup book about faeries that mentions something about changelings. Maybe I should look into that.

    Actually as I sit here typing on my PC, I can hear Jude playing happily by himself in the next room and I am starting to think he is going through a fierce streak of independence. If I went in and tried to play with him, he'd run to the lounge and demand to watch TV and then break down in tears when I said "no". I'm sure that would happen, so I'm going to leave him playing happily with his felt rock band, singing a medley of songs that work to the tune of ABC and playing his piano (my old Casio keyboard from the early 1980s that still works perfectly).

    When I don't give him what he wants he says "I don't like mummy." This is quite the dramatic change from 4 days ago when he was constantly saying "Jude is happy. Jude loves mummy." Hence my reeling mind. What happened to cause this dramatic overnight change?

    Speaking of overnight... yesterday he refused to take a nap during the day. 4 days ago he was telling me he was tired and wanted to sleep around 12.30pm and would crash happily in bed. Now he keeps insisting on no sleep. So yesterday Jeremy took him out and they had a really fun, exciting day together. Breakfast down by the water, run around a book store, a swim in the pool... it should have wiped him out but then Jude refused to sleep at night as well.

    I suspect he was overtired, but I don't know why he is refusing to sleep. A few days ago he told us when he was tired and crawled happily into bed and fell promptly asleep, all of a sudden that's all gone out the window.

    I just hope this is a very temporary change. I think my best course of action right now is to give him his space if that's what he wants.

    On a possibly related note, he has finally stopped waiting until bed time to poo in his nappy, but so far only 1 poo has made it in the potty. There have been several land squarely on the carpet. At least he's doing well-formed poos since we changed his milk to a new gluten and lactose free brand. Maybe it's all part of something. Who knows?

    Thursday 24 March 2011

    Accidents happen (bad ones)

    I just read this article in the Sydney Morning Herald about a toddler nearly drowning in a rip on a normal day at the beach with mum and dad.

    About a month ago we went to the beach. Swimming between the flags as we always do, I waded thigh-deep into the water carrying Jude and steadied myself against an oncoming wave, turning Jude away to protect him with my body.

    The wave hit with such brute force it sent a shock of pain through my aching pregnant hips and I had to struggle to stay standing. I immediately headed back to the beach, realising that I was powerless against the forces of nature that day. I could barely walk afterwards from the pain.

    Had I been any deeper before the wave hit, I would have gone down dragging Jude with me, and I can see how easy it would be to get into trouble in a rip with your toddler. It just goes to show you can be careful, you can do everything "right", but you can not plan for all possible accidents.

    Sunday 20 March 2011

    Birth weight rubbish

    Why do we, upon having a baby, promptly declare to the world our baby's vital stats including birth weight? To any friends or family without children those numbers mean nothing, but what do they really mean?

    I was just reading on a friends blog about how her son was born in the 90th percentile and how her midwife told her this was a good thing. Jude was born in the 3rd percentile and neither my obstetrician nor the paediatrician were concerned in any respect, and yet it seemed to send the stupid nurses into a state of anguish which ended with disastrous effect on my psyche, left me no time for sleep, gave me mastitis and destroyed Jude's chance at breastfeeding. If only I had the courage to listen to the actual doctors, the ones with the medical degrees and many many years of experience, but it's impossible to ignore the flurry of annoying bitches buzzing in your face when you're a new mum and you're horribly sleep deprived.

    That said, my new obstetrician is concerned by Jude's seemingly small birth weight and wants to keep a careful eye on Lilac.

    "Here is my son," I argue. "Look, he is perfect and is not so small now."

    "Here is me and here is my husband," I protest. "We are small. I, and all my sisters, were only 2.8kgs at birth. We will not produce big children."

    I would, quite honestly, be utterly aghast and horrified to give birth to a 90th percentile baby given the measurements of my family and our birth-size histories. If Lilac came out huge I would be terrified of infant diabetes or obesity. It would NOT be a good thing, no matter what any midwife tried to tell me.

    I don't want to be concerned about birth size. I am expecting a small baby and I've tried to express this to my new doctor, but his concern is legitimate because I did have pre-eclampsia and that is a condition of the placenta breaking down early and failing to provide sustenance to the developing baby, so I understand he just wants to watch out for any signs of that reoccuring but I refuse, REFUSE, to buy into any of that birth weight crap ever again.

    I will not have anyone make me feel bad about the size of my children. They are perfect and they will thrive and we will all be a lot better off without the interference of people who think every woman should give birth to a giant.

    Sunday 13 March 2011

    An important lesson that I forgot

    Another trip down memory lane to that foggy time when Jude was a newborn and I wasn't getting any sleep. This was during a time when Jude's day sleeps were 20 minute naps and, while he slept for a few hours at a stretch during the night, I was so stressed I couldn't sleep at all.

    After several months wondering what I was doing wrong, the community nurse came around to see what was happening in the home. That particular day Jude decided to sleep for hours, but after he finally woke and fed the community nurse explained something that changed everything for me.

    "Watch and listen carefully," she explained, "and learn the difference between crying because he needs you and crying because he is having trouble falling asleep." It hadn't occurred to me that he might be crying because he wanted to be asleep, I kept assuming he needed me to do something, and it was killing me that I couldn't figure out what that was.

    As a long-term insomniac I know how frustrating it is to not be able to fall asleep. I often lie in bed groaning and bemoaning the fact that I seemed to be absent the day they taught everyone the trick of lying down, closing your eyes and falling asleep. It seems I never grew out of the problem that so many newborns face.

    So I learned great patience with Jude and I paid close attention. I soon learned that there is a difference between crying and sleep anguish. I don't believe in controlled crying, so I would not abandon him during the trying time while sleep alluded him, but I realised that I shouldn't pick him and carry him around, either. I would sit by his side and pat him until he was calm and then, when his whimpers had turned to moans, I would leave him to find sleep on his own. It didn't take too long before he was sleeping well.

    Recently, however, I realised how much time I was wasting during the day running up to Jude's room when he was supposed to be taking a nap. He would lie in bed and talk loudly to himself and his toys and then whimper and moan. I would run up and try to settle him. I'd try to coax him to sleep. I'd remind him he was tired and had asked to go to bed. I would inevitably end up frustrated and angry at him for refusing to sleep when he was clearly tired.

    Then finally I remembered what I had learned when he was a newborn. He wasn't up there in bed crying or calling out for me, so I fought the urge to tend to him and left him to fall asleep on his own. Amazingly it took barely a few days for sleep to start coming easily and naturally to him. By allowing him to figure it out for himself, I hope I have prevented a lifetime of insomnia for him.

    Wednesday 9 March 2011

    Friends who parent differently

    I have a friend who I met after having Jude. I really enjoyed her honesty and refreshing openness after our children were born and she didn't wear the pretense of most of the new mums who seemed to always put on airs.

    Over time, however, we drifted apart, having simply not enough in common to build a strong friendship. One of the biggest issues for me has long been that I don't agree with some of the choices she has made raising her daughter.

    From the earliest age she talked strongly about not "allowing" her daughter to wake up frequently through the night. Although she never quite said it, I had the feeling she imposed a strict regime of controlled crying without hesitation. Raising a child strictly is her nature.

    My issues continued to grow when, at the age of 1, her daughter was frequently stuck in time out for basically being a normal child. While I reserve time out for those rare times when Jude is really beyond coping and needs the time out to calm down, she used time out as a way to train her daughter to learn new skills. For example, she was put in time out for not speaking.

    She recently had a 2nd baby, a boy. Her husband, so chuffed that his sperm was able to produce a male of the species, seemed hell bent on getting him out playing sports right away. When he was just 2 weeks old he took him swimming in the surf. A 2 week old baby sleeps and wakes to eat before going back to sleep. They don't, with all their minimal layers of fat, go swimming in the surf.

    So how do you stay friends with someone when their parenting choices so utterly conflict with your own? It's really not easy.