Blech, bits, and video clip :)

No update for a couple of days – I have been really poorly with Arthur’s cold, blech. I feel ultra bad for him now, as it feels more like flu than a cold, only no fever. I ache and ache and ache and ache and ache. It’s so sad that my poor lil boy had to ache like that and I just thought he was bothered because he was congested, and didn’t give him pain relief very often :( I wish there was a way to KNOW these things! Also I feel dizzy and queasy, so maybe that’s why he was partial to bringing all his food up. It’s not a pukey bug or anything, and you feel hungry as normal, but yeurgh my tummy does not feel good most of the time. My throat has stopped being sore now but my nose and head are solid concrete. Thank goodness it’s been 3 days and now I can look forward to getting better soon!

I had an osteopath appt today but I don’t feel well enough to go out. Looking after Arthur has been more difficult than I expected on my own and not being well. I mean, obviously this is what SAHMs have to do! But I thought I would muddle through and it wouldn’t be too bad. It has been really hard. I just had no energy and felt so awful. Thankfully he has napped pretty well in the day, so at least I haven’t had to battle with him over that. He is asleep at the moment, but he has been for an hour and he might wake any time, so I’m just writing this till he wakes and then I’ll save it in Word for later.

Arthur is increasingly bored with staying in the house and playing with toys on the floor. I don’t blame him one bit! But lately I haven’t been well enough to take him out. Yesterday I phoned my mummy to ask what I could do with him! She usually has good ideas. She suggested I make some “household” toys for him to play with, as she found I liked those better than expensive bright-coloured plastic toys.

Oh he’s awake, I’ll be back later! :)

Okay I’m back, but only for a few minutes probably, as Arthur is on his playmat watching me, and that gets boring very fast!

Anyway so yesterday I filled a wastepaper basket with “safe” household rubbish and a couple of other things – one of his stacking rings (the red one), a food pot lid, two large pieces of thick paper, crumpled into loose balls, an empty tissue box, that kind of thing. Arthur LOVED it!! He played with it for an HOUR!!!! He literally chucked the red stacking ring aside and went for the crumpled paper and food pot lid with far more excitement! He also did the whole thing sitting up without my support – he is getting so much better at the sitting thing. He sits with a much straighter back and reaches so far to pick things up from in front and both sides that he almost topples over, but he never lets himself. I do always have a few cushions behind him though, because sometimes he just decides he’s had enough of sitting and throws himself backwards! I used to put a massive pile of them, but now I try to make it as “floor like” as possible, just soft enough so that he doesn’t hurt himself. I want him to learn that he’s going to fall if he hurls his body backwards!

The other new toy he really went for was a large plastic water bottle (empty) which I suddenly figured I could fill with rice and pasta bits – just a quarter full so that they made an interesting rattle. He loves it! I am really pleased :) I used tricolore pasta so that it’s more colourful. I have just handed him a large-size empty cotton reel left over from my sewing, and he acted like I just handed him gold or something! He seems to be getting increasingly bored with his nice colourful toys, and far more interested in a piece of paper, or the TV remote, or a million other things that are “not for Arthur” (as I’m constantly having to say these days!).

I am getting tired of wondering about this, but I am *hoping* that his bottom front teeth are on the move. Until now, all his teething actions have been biting hard over his whole gum area, top and bottom, molars and front teeth, equally. Over the last week he has been biting hard on things, specifically pushing objects and fingers onto his bottom gum in the middle and pressing so hard that his arm shakes with the effort. I also noticed him rubbing that spot on a teething toy, back and forth as though it was soothing. So hopefully they are actually DOING something now! I can’t remember if I said, but I got my first two teeth at the exact same time. The two bottom middle ones cut through together, and grew out of the gum at the same rate, so maybe Arthur will cut both his bottom teeth together too? I can see them through the gum – two little white lines under the surface, and there isn’t one more prominent than the other. C’mon teeth!!

Thank you for all the lovely messages again (and Julie for the email!)! I really appreciated all the supportive words and also the good advice - Michelle your note about what you do with Seth came in super handy, as I tried whomping on Arthur’s butt the very next nap after reading it! And it WORKED!! Thank you! :) Of course it hasn’t worked every time, and he has gotten mighty annoyed once or twice, but it did work again at bedtime last night, so it’s encouraging! :)

Mallory, I loved your dream!!! I can’t wait for it to come true!! :)

Arthur is now on my lap, having got bored with the playmat – he started giving me looks that said, “I can’t believe you’re not picking me up! Humph!” so I put him on my lap, and he is now all smiley and currently eating my credit card. Credit cards are fun and shiney, and good for biting on! ;)

Oh whoops, he has dropped it on the floor, and would now like to say this:

H . 2 XnmL

And that is all, apparently! I love to let him do google searches! He looks so enthusiastic at the keyboard, and recently he did a search that came up with an article on poverty and inequality in Great Britain from 1942 to 1990!! The other successful search he did had at the top of the list, an article on malnutrition during pregnancy, hehe! NOT one of Arthur’s concerns! ;)

Here he is a couple of evenings ago in his sleeping bag, helping Daddy on the computer:

He is so funny in how eager he is to “help”£with t h0ings
Like hs’
Helping now! He looks so exasperated if he k dsaDS gets moved out of reach for a moment so that we can actually finish what we were looking at! Poor Arthur!

Well he is getting bored so I will save this again and finish later. I have more to rwite0 so
0I won’t post it yet. Need to find this little man something interesting to do to take his mind off being os helpfuyl right now!! ;)

Back again! We played for a while, then Arthur watched me do some laundry and eat some lunch, did a huuuuge poo, got changed, and then got sleepy, so he is napping again now :) He wasn’t easy to get to sleep though. He nursed, then I banged on his bum (!!), and he kept closing his eyes, but then waking and crying. After a while I figured it was his teeth, as he was banging his gums together and crying, “Oh-yo-yo-yo!” which always means “Ow, my ____!” whatever is hurting him, poor thing! So I rubbed his gums firmly with Bonjela, and he actually giggled when I rubbed it over his bottom middle gum! It felt odd, sort of rubbery rather than smooth, but the rest of his gums were smooth like normal. Perhaps that’s because of all the rubbing and chewing he’s been doing on that one spot? After that I gave him teething powder, which he took eagerly with smiles :) And then I banged his butt again, but he wasn’t happy with that method. Eventually I nursed him and he went to sleep. It was hard for me to leave though – he kept on grasping hold of a wad of breast tissue in his little fist and dragging me towards him to keep the nipple in his mouth! He did not want me to leave! I still try to avoid nursing him completely to sleep though, and I managed to detach him just now, and let him put his hands and feet on me till he was asleep. Little love :)

Ohhh yes, I know what I was going to say!! I am an auntie!! I have a niece! Yay, it’s a girl – I knew it was going to be a girl!! So Arthur is no longer the only grandchild on Neil’s side! The new baby is called Ella (isn’t that pretty?!) and she was born in the early hours of yesterday, weighing 7lbs 10oz. A lovely weight too! That’s what I thought Arthur would weigh – maximum! I am sooooooo envious though, because Rosemary’s labour was just so irritatingly easy! Get this – at midnight, she thought she had wind. It persisted. After a few hours they went to the hospital. At 3.40am they arrived and she was assessed. As soon as she was examined, they said, “I can see the head!” She pushed through 5 contractions, and Ella was born at 4am. Oh. My. Bob. That is so not fair! Of course it IS fair, and it’s wonderful for Rosemary that she had such an easy time of it, but I feel strangely weird about it. And annoyed at myself for feeling that way! Tsk. But of course, not having loads of time to stretch and all that, she did tear quite badly, but they are both fine now.

I am so happy about their lovely news! And delighted that Ella is here, and that she’s a girl and that she has such a beautiful name. But I don’t know. I can’t shake “something”, I don’t know what, which I totally didn’t expect in the first place. At first I was so excited to hear the news, I thought maybe the “something” was like an anti-climax feeling. But it seemed more than that. I felt really depressed last night, and couldn’t stop thinking about them. I don’t understand what is behind it, and if I’m honest, I am actually anxious about it. When I told Neil about it, he said maybe it’s to do with attention – given that perhaps the attention will shift to Rosemary and the new baby rather than me and Arthur? I don’t know if that’s it, but that is what is making me anxious. I would hate to be feeling all funny about things just because I childishly want attention. The very idea makes me feel awful. I spend ages praying last night because I just needed to ask God to change me in this area. If it’s true that I’m this bad of an attention seeker, so that I even get jealous of happy people and depressed that something lovely has happened to them, then I NEED to change. I would hate that about myself, if it’s true. And I don’t want to start hating on myself again. I have been “clean” of that habit for a long time, for the most part. I don’t loathe anything about myself. But I would if I was this bitter and twisted and self-centred. God please help me not be like that. Please.

Anyway I hope that’s NOT why I was feeling funny. I still don’t understand why. The other possibility that came to mind was maybe I just want to have another baby, and I feel wistful about their situation, because I’m longing to be there again. But again, WHY should I feel that way? I have Arthur. Surely Arthur is all I should ever need or want. I feel guilty if my longing for more is affecting me that much when he’s only 7 months old. Like he’s not enough. And he IS. So why can’t I feel that way and be happy? Or is my longing for another a symptom of something that needs sorting out? Like back to the attention thing again? Do I actually want another baby for the wrong reasons? I just don’t know anymore, I can’t figure anything out today. I didn’t think it was for bad reasons – I just want to have more children, and I loved being pregnant and giving birth (hard though it was!) and having a tiny newborn to care for. But I feel it’s wrong to Arthur to be wishing it all back again now that he’s grown out of that phase. He’s just as fulfilling now as he was then. I don’t know why I feel anything today.

I did wonder for a moment if it was because Rosemary had a girl and I didn’t. But I immediately dismissed that because I couldn’t be happier to have had a boy. I actually WANTED a boy in the first place, although I would have been just as delighted if he had been a girl, of course. So it’s not that. I would like a daughter at some point, but it can’t be that because I’m even quite eager to have another boy next time, so there’s no achy longing for a girl or anything. I don’t knoooow.

Urgh. Enough of that. It’s GREAT news about my new niece, and I’m thrilled! I don’t know what came over me with the weird feelings. I am feeling slightly less weird about it today, so whatever it was will probably just disappear, thank goodness. I hope I am not as yucky inside as I was beginning to think.

What else can I write about before Arthur wakes? Oh I finished that Cuddlebun at last!! Yay! I am soooo pleased with it. I used hemp stretch terry for the soaker and the matching doubler, and it has a stretchy knit print (firemen!) on the outside, and blue microfleece for extra softness and dryness on the inside. I used a hidden layer of sherpa :) And chose white snaps. And um. Decided to turn and topstitch it instead of serging it, because the legs are more chunky and soft on Arthur’s thighs for some reason. Anyway, here it is, up close, and in action!...

Doesn’t it fit him well?! I am already half way through making another one, with different fabrics and colours, and I have another one cut out ready to sew! I just LOVE sewing nappies! I forgot how fun it was, all that long time without much access to my sewing machine. Now that it’s in the kitchen I can sew much more easily. My serger/overlocker is still in the bedroom though, so I can only use that when Arthur’s awake and watching me :)

Arthur is rocking a lot on his hands and knees now. He seems so impatient to move. He does a lot of bobbing about, whatever position he’s in. He is trying to sit himself up from lying down, but doesn’t have the strength yet. If I see him straining to sit, I give him a little push from under his neck and shoulders and he’s up very easily. Also if I sit him on my leg with his legs either side, he will push himself to standing in an instant! He loves to stand more than anything else, and is getting very strong at it now. He doesn’t bounce much when standing – he prefers to puff his chest out and make his legs like ramrods with a huge smile on his face! He’s so proud of his standing! It’s very cute. He takes basically all his weight on his own now when standing. I do have to hold him because he has noooo balance at all, but if he’s leaning on something like the sofa, he will stay on his legs for a couple of seconds before they buckle. They do that randomly so it’s not safe to let him lean alone!

Just these last few days he has been doing this odd bobbing when he’s sitting. Look (will put this in the video clip page too)....

Why is he doing that?! Is it to move in some way? Or to do with leaning forward till he’s on his front like in the clip? The one time he fell forward like that before, it was an accident and he cried. This time it’s like he was wanting to fall forwards, and he didn’t mind it at all – he just rearranged his limbs. Anyway. Just wondered if anyone knew what on earth he’s doing when he does this!

Well he just woke after 30 minutes but he was crying and sleepy so I nursed him again and he’s out. Lately he has been having HUGE afternoon naps – yesterday’s was nearly 3 hours!! So he has been going to be later, between 7 and 8 as a result. I think he is tired from his cold though, as a bit of post-viral fatigue is normal after a cold. I am slightly dreading that part of it myself. I am tired enough already and even on a good night I am getting maybe 4 hours sleep, in two parts usually. Arthur normally wakes now at around 11pm, and then again around 2, and again somewhere around 6am. He’s up for the day from the 6am waking, and our routine now is that Neil gets up with him and I get some more sleep. Isn’t Neil wonderful?! He is a real morning person though. I am soooo not one of those! I think I need to become one though, for the next few years at least!

Oh I keep on meaning to mention that Arthur has found his bits in the last few weeks, hehe! His hand goes straight there the instant his nappy is off, and I have discovered I need at least a third hand if I am going to remove his nappy, prevent his hand going in stinky poo, and clean said poo off his bottom at the same time! I find I need to do all of those at the same instant, otherwise something is going to get poo on it. Other than the nappy and wipe that is! Today I was poorly co-ordinated, and poo got on his fingers and my jeans. Ew. But anyway, so he has found his lil bits ;) He is so cute scrunching them all the time! But he really does scrrrrunch – it looks painful to me! Also sometimes he treats them like elastic and pulls till they sort of ping out of his grasp! Ow. But he doesn’t seem to find it painful. I have seen mothers soooo many times over the years make comments to their baby boys as they change their nappies: “Don’t play with your willy!” or “I don’t think you should be doing that, (insert baby’s name)”; “Leave yourself alone!” or “Stop fiddling with that” or even, “Don’t touch, it’s dirty!” – basically a huge range of comments that imply that their little ones should not be touching their bits during nappy changes (or at any other time for that matter). I don’t see anything wrong with it at ALL, and it really bugs me when mothers seem to try to discourage it in some way. It’s completely normal. Really. What’s to discourage?! I think discouraging can even be harmful, because really, what is it teaching your child?! Something negative about self-image or natural instinct, or at the very least, that it can be wrong to touch a part of your own body, or that part of your body is taboo or dirty. No way do I want any of these messages to reach my son. I am perfectly happy for him to fiddle with his lil bits! He is fascinated by them anyway, and since he is into exploring everything at the moment, I see no reason to restrict him on this exploration of his own little person. The things I say to him while I’m changing him and noticing him squishing his bits are stuff like, “What have you got there?!” or “Are you fiddling with your bits?!” or some similar question, with a cheery smile. If I have to move his hand out the way to wipe him and he’s annoyed about it, I just tell him I have to clean him and he can have them back in a moment, hehe! I hope he will get nothing but an open easy-going vibe about his body from Neil and I.

My own parents were super easy-going about body image and sex and stuff. I am so grateful to them for that. For me, that formed a very important part of my physical self-esteem and ease with the subject of sex or similar issues. They told me about sex when I was three. I don’t remember it, but I asked one day and Mummy told me. I didn’t bat an eyelid, and she said she didn’t think I understood, but she bought me a book about it for little children for the next time I asked, so she could explain with something to better help me understand. I don’t remember a time that I didn’t know about sex or feel it was just some normal thing that people do which was no big deal. At school I never understood the giggling and jokes about it, well, till I was a bit older anyway.

Also my parents used to bath with us and there was no hiding away of any part of our bodies when I was growing up. I’m so glad they did that. My brother and I were used to seeing them without clothes on and it was normal to us. I was happy to wear nothing on a hot evening after my bath around my family until I was maybe 10 or 11. I just like how easy-going it has been for me with this subject, because I know you can get quite weird reactions from people, like there are people who never knew what a man looked like without any clothes on till they got married or whatever, because their own father and brothers were never seen at home wearing less than a suit (okay so I’m exaggerating, but you get my point!). I think it’s sad when that happens. What must children think of their bodies, or THE human body in general, if their role models teach them that it should be hidden away and not spoken of. I really want to bring Arthur (and any other children we have) up with the same liberal sense of familiarity that my parents taught me. I remember when I talked to Neil about all this, he first thought it was a little odd, because he was brought up in a much more conservative home where he never ever saw his parents even in their underwear, let alone without clothes, and from a very young age, he and his siblings would isolate themselves (like people tend to do) to bath or get changed. He was interested in my experience from my upbringing, and after we discussed the benefits (and draw-backs for the alternative), he was happy to try it. So he baths with Arthur, and has never looked back. We both get changed in front of Arthur, and wash in front of him, etc, and will continue to do so for a long while yet. I hope he will be like me when I was growing up, and stand casually leaning against the bathroom door-frame while I am in the bath or getting changed, telling me about his day at school. I know some people who were brought up waaaay opposite to this will think it weird. But I would only wish relaxed views on my little one, and this is one I feel strongly about. It isn’t weird to a child. Only to children who have been taught that it is weird.

Anyway. Where did all that come from?! Oh yes, Arthur’s bits! So anyway, he has found them :) I think it’s cute! And all of a sudden I can’t think of anything else to say…. Nope, nothing there! Arthur is still asleep and it’s 5.20pm so maybe I should get him up soon?? I never know about getting him up. Usually I’m just so glad he’s sleeping that there’s no need to get him up. He sleeps as long as he needs, or usually less, before he wakes naturally in part of his sleep cycle. I guess that if he’s taking extra sleep, he is needing extra sleep. He was so upset when he woke earlier that I was glad to nurse him back to sleep, as though he needed it. So maybe I’ll let him sleep. If that offsets his bedtime then so be it. He is recovering from his cold still, so I need to be extra flexible with him. I wanted to try him on solids again when he turned 7 months, but he was unwell, so I’ll wait till he’s thoroughly better and try then. I think I’ll have another go with the apple puree. I have three cubes of it in the freezer. Money is slightly tight at the moment so after Neil gets paid I am buying a Baby Safe Feeder, and then I will try him on all sorts of things in that, and see how he likes it!

Well that’s all for now. I’ll update again soon though :)

X-ray appt

Thank you again for the notes and messages! :) Ann, don't worry, I will not flame you! I appreciate the reminder to keep thinking with my own head. I trust the things I read at Kellymom because they are not just opinions or "preconceived ideas". I specifically like that site because it is so grounded in the latest clinical research, and it references a LOT of it. It pretty much shows that times are changing, new things are being discovered, and it's the sites where doctors say the opposite stuff that make me wary. THOSE seem to me to be the ones that are outdated and not following the latest research. I know they are doctors and it's what we've always heard is best, but that doesn't make it the "truth". I am a research-based girl. It just makes the most sense. And Kellymom is all about that. I AM glad that it tells me my ideas are right, though if it didn't and it had adequate up-to-date research to prove me wrong, I would definitely be considering that and acting accordingly. In my opinion, most doctors these days appear to need seriously re-educating about infant care. That sounds a bit strong, but I think it's true! It's very hard to find a doctor who isn't just churning out advice that they learned from training 20 years ago, or a book 15 years ago, or just because that's what they all tell mothers to do, and always have done. I have come across one doctor so far who has even vaguely researched and changed her thoughts on things like weaning and breastfeeding and things. She hasn't got a clue about co-sleeping though - thinks it's out of the dark ages and can't be right! But you see what I mean? I am READING the latest research, and it is saying very different stuff to what the health profession have always said. In some ways, that is. It's them who need to catch up I think.

Anyway. I am happy with my choices, but it's hard to live with them when others (like health care professionals) can make it hard for you to go ahead and enjoy doing what you know to be the best thing for you baby. I do mean to be flexible too, but I think this IS me being flexible. Only, I'm bending in a direction away from the accepted norm, so people always seem to want to challenge me over it. Doesn't make it wrong though.

Jemma, thanks for the great idea about gluten free rusks!! I hadn't even thought of that. How do you make bread?!?!

Well what can I tell you today? Arthur is a bit better again today - hooray! He did have a bad night though, and was awake for 2 hours from 3am, urgh! I have his cold :( Poo. It hit me like a truck all of a sudden in the middle of the night. One minute I literally felt fine (if knackered), and the next minute I couldn't breathe through my nose and my throat was sore and yucky. I know I have been fighting it off since Thursday (4 days ago!) because I definitely felt like I was coming down with a cold back then. It went off after a couple of days though. Also I know I was exposed to it on Wednesday or earlier because every time Arthur sneezed I got bathed in the face with viral mist! So my guess is that I just got too run down and sleep deprived to continue fighting it off and my body let it win. Poo.

Neil is at work today of course, so I am feeling pretty rotten. I didn't get much sleep, and that on the back of a completely sleepless night is not helping me feel any better! I ache. My glands hurt, my head aches, my eyes prickle, my nose runs and runs, and I am sneezing over and over like Arthur was. Now I know how bad he felt, and I feel for him even more, no matter that he is getting much better now. Poor poor baby. What a thing to go through when you're only a baby and never felt ill before!

I haven't felt up to doing much with him today, and he has taken longer naps than normal so that has been a relief. I have not been able to get any sleep while he napped though. I took him to his appt at the hospital today. He had a hip X-ray, and he was as good as gold. He lay perfectly still and let me hold his knees together really firmly like they showed me to. He didn't squirm or move at all till they were done with the X-ray. I wore one of those lead apron things that nearly crushed me into the floor with the weight of it! After that we took the X-ray to the physio and she showed me that Arthur's hips are perfect - hooray! His tiny little bones looked so cute on the X-ray!

He doesn't have to wear night boots any more!! Yay! His right foot is still a tad skewy, so I have to do regular stretches on it throughout the day. We see her again on July 18th for reassessment. He will be bearing weight through his feet more and more around then, so she will have different things to assess him over, apparently. He may need boots or even a set of plasters again if he has trouble with them when he starts to stand by himself and walk. I hope he won't and everything will be fine now.

I have neeearly finished the Cuddlebuns nappy I have been sewing! Sooo nearly. I have been hammering snaps on it today! Arthur loves watching me do that. He giggles every time the hammer goes BANG on a snap! He's funny :) But he got bored with three snaps to go, so I haven't quite finished it yet. The moment I have, I will take a photo and rush to put the nappy on Arthur's bum! I love putting my own nappies on his bott. I feel so accomplished when I see them there looking cute! I have already started cutting out fabric for another Cuddlebun. I have soooooo much cute fabric. And a place to sew again! And Arthur needs nappies that fit him. Cuddlebuns seem to fit him just nicely at the moment.

I feel bad this afternoon because I decided to help Arthur to get to sleep by himself for his nap. He was sleepy at 3pm, so I took him up to bed. I nursed him, and he didn't fall asleep like that, so after I burped him, I just said "Night night Arthur, sleepy time" and put him down on the bed, and walked across the hall to the other bedroom (where I use the computer). He babbled and rolled for ages, and I went in after 5 minutes or so. I put him back in the spot I first laid him in, and said, "Night night Arthur, sleepy time" and went out again. He made some cross noises after a while and when I went back in I just did the same thing over and over. And over. He got crosser and crosser. He even cried. I went to him every time he cried, but he was so not happy. Finally around 5pm (two hours later!) - I can't believe I had that much patience, though I nearly gave up several times - I stayed with him on the bed and patted his back regularly. He complained but he was so tired out that he just went to sleep. I feel awful that he cried a lot over this. At the moment I'm still not crazy about nursing him to sleep because that is giving him a LOT of milk, which I'm not sure he's okay with just yet. Also I was just feeling too ill and tired to rock him for ages until he slept. So this had to be it. Or just get him up again and not give him a nap.

Anyway he slept. Oh he is suddenly awake and crying! Back later.

Okay I'm back again. He woke right up and cried a lot, but I saw that he was still sleepy so I went in and said, "It's okay Arthur, Mummy's here." and patted his little back till he put his head back down and closed his eyes again. He did keep on whimpering for a bit, but he went to sleep.

I feel somehow like I'm not doing this right. He is teething so badly today. His cheeks are red and swollen and his is constantly biting on his hands. Should I not be doing the sleep thing while he's having teething trouble? Somehow it doesn't seem fair. Urgh. All my instints say DON'T do stuff to make him cry, even helping him to sleep by himself. When I try to work against my instincts, I feel totally lost. I have no sense of direction in what I'm doing, and I doubt my abilities as his Mummy, and lose track of my goals, etc. It makes me wonder WHY I am trying to work against my instincts in the first place. But I wanted him to know how to fall asleep by himself, so that he can start to get to sleep quicker and easier. But then, is that just for my benefit? I don't know anymore. All I know is, I feel happy that he fell asleep by himself, but sooooo bad about how that happened. It doesn't seem worth it to me. I don't know what to do next.

He's crying again. I have to go. Back asap!

Doctor's appt and update

Thank you all SO much for the notes, emails and messages. I tuned in first chance I got to see if anyone had any advice for me, and I was so happy to see all your loving supportive messages! Thank you!! When I read your advice I did take it away and research it online a bit. I did research on infant dehydration and stuff, and as ever it led me back to Kellymom where I found this page about when breastfed babies are sick. It was so helpful and reassuring because it tells me that my milk is okay for Arthur to be ingesting right now, even with the vomiting. With formula I think you’d need to dilute it so that it would stay down, but it doesn’t seem to be so with breast milk, as Kellymom says it is the most easily and rapidly digested fluid a baby can ingest. Also Kellymom reassured me that I don’t need to worry about giving extra fluids or rehydration treatments so long as Arthur isn’t showing major signs of dehydration. There is a good list of the signs, and it says less that 2 wet nappies in 24 hours. That seems super few to me, so I think I would worry at fewer than 5 or 6. But anyway. Breast milk seems to be THE fluid for dehydrated babies, so I’m relieved.

But what I did need to do (according to Kellymom) was nurse him much more frequently and with smaller amounts. So today we have done that. I am trying to nurse him as often as every hour, or more if he’ll take it. I nurse him for only a minute or so and then take him off the breast. He hates this and cries, which is sort of good because it shows me he is still hungry. I hate taking the breast away from him when he wants it, and hearing him cry because of it, but I’m so desperate to stop his vomiting once and for all now. Sometimes Neil holds him for a while after I take him off the breast, and then I’ll offer him a bit more. He hasn’t been sick today since we’ve been doing this, and he seems to enjoy nursing when he’s at it.

The advice about pumping before feeding him was also a great idea. Arthur hasn’t fed much in the last 24 hours, or only little bits at a time. He feels smaller and thinner to both of us, which makes me feel sad for him, but at least he has some serious reserves to fall back on! So I am not too worried about that right now. I got no sleep at all last night. Not one wink. Arthur slept a couple of hours after we finally got back to bed in the middle of the night, and I lay next to him trying to sleep, but I just couldn’t. I kept wanting to watch him, or reach out and touch his skin to see if he was too warm or cool. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It just didn’t feel right to switch off from him for even a moment. He is so precious to me.

This morning I went to sleep for 2 hours while Neil looked after Arthur, and when I woke my breasts were totally engorged. They even hurt! I think Arthur could have latched on, but there was no way I was going to offer him a veritable milk BOMB to suck on in his condition! I decided to pump both breasts as empty as I could, to completely relieve them, and that way he could suck all he liked for comfort afterwards without getting loads of milk. He would also get some milk doing that, since they seem to refill quite fast. Oh the wonder of The Breast Pump! The sheer relief of emptying ones breasts when they feel like they are about to pop open! I pumped and pumped till they seemed pretty empty again, and look what came out!!....

I got TEN OUNCES!!! 300mls!! One of those pots is all right breast, and the other one is one quarter right breast and the rest left breast. I was amazed. Also I was so pleased to start a freezer stash with it, because I decided I should have one, for when my milk starts to disappear when I am pregnant again. Okay so it’s too early for storing milk for something that far away, but you never know what might happen after a random parsnip! ;) Anyway I could hardly waste all that milk, could I? So it’s freezing in there now :) I was on a high for hours after pumping that! I feel so mooooooooooooo! Arthur watched me pump with an odd almost-smile on his face – I can’t imagine what he thought I was doing! I nursed him about 10 minutes after I pumped and by the gulpy sounds I think maybe he got another ounce or two, which is good. He didn’t have to rush too much either, which is even better.

He has slept a lot today. I think this is possibly a good sign that he is mending. He hasn’t had a wet nappy since he peed on the bed at 2am though, and it’s 3.45pm now :( He did poo again in that time, this time with black speckles in it. I am hoping this is just to do with the bloody snot he has been swallowing.

We took him to the emergency clinic at the hospital today, and saw a pretty crap doctor. She was very nice, and the good part is, she was qualified to examine him and tell us that his ears and throat are not infected, his chest is clear and his heart sounds are healthy. Phew. But she was quite condescending towards me when I told her he was still exclusively breastfed. She said, “Yes, but what food is he eating?” I said, “None. He is exclusively breastfed still.” She looked at his age on the notes, gave me a really condescending look and said, “He’s SEVEN months old! He should be eating food by now you know, not just milk!”

Ugh. She really got on my nerves. She even fed me a pile of total crap about why he actually SHOULDN’T be breastfed anymore!! She said it didn’t contain what he needed nutritionally after six months. She said he needed better protein and minerals than my milk could give him. She said he would not be able to eat solids very well if I didn’t hurry up and start him on them. She said she could see he was teething (he was chewing his fingers at the time) but he should not be biting on his own hands – he should be biting on food to help the teeth come down (what?!!). She said if he did not bite on food and instead on his fingers, the teeth would not come down so effectively. She said he needed food NOW for nutrition and taste, otherwise he would be affected by it for years to come. I was so piddled off to hear such crap marching out of her mouth at me that I could feel myself flushing with annoyance. Neil started looking at the floor instead of at me! He knows me when I go pink, hehe! I have SUCH strong feelings about nursing, and I hate being treated like a stupid know-nothing mother (which, trust me, is how she was talking to me) when I am a) pretty clever and b) exceptionally well researched on various aspects of what is best for my baby, including feeding and sleeping and so on. She asked had I tried him with teething rusks? I said no. She looked at me like, “You haven’t even heard of/thought of trying RUSKS?!” I didn’t bother to say patiently, “Of course I have heard of rusks, but I have also spent time and energy reading the detailed ingredients, and have no intention of offering them to my baby before I am ready to introduce him to products containing wheat – which incidentally is not the greatest of ideas before at least the age of 8 months. Preferably longer. Despite what the box says about when to offer them. Thank you.” I waited for her to finish and nearly said, “What complete balls.” but had the sense to realise that would be rude, so the best I could do in my cross state was to restrict myself to an incredulous disbelieving look and a very doubtful sounding, “Uhhhmm?!” every time she said something turd-like. Tsk.

She did keep banging on about it, and asked hadn’t my health visitor told me he should be on solids by now, etc. She said I should talk to my doctor or health visitor about it, and think about starting him on solids right away. I just nodded and smiled through the rest of the appt, rather than engage her on the issue. But it bugged me.

We asked about the black specks in Arthur’s poo and she said she didn’t know what that was (?!!!!!!) but said maybe he had been putting his hands funny places and did we have any pets?!!! What?! She did say the blood-stained mucus is okay. I presume the black specks are digested blood from swallowing the mucus. I can’t believe she didn’t know.

Anyway. It basically went well, except for all the pressure and condescension about solids. She told me that the earlier a baby can start on solids, the better. Preferably try putting BITS OF RUSK in their mouths from 4 months!!! I soooo had to bite my tongue. And I am kind of holding back certain comments here too. It would be unnecessary and mean of me, but boy do I feel them all the same. Still, she meant well, I’m sure. And she told us he was okay. She suggested the smaller frequent feeds, and I told her we were already doing that, so she said to carry on. Then we came home. Arthur rather enjoyed being out in the car – he gazed around him like he had never been out before and gave me wondering smiles now and then from his car seat (I sat next to him). So cute.

Oops, another gap! It’s 7.10pm now and Arthur woke from the nap he was taking after we got home, so I had to go. He has been in fairly good spirits this afternoon. He played vigorously (!) with his toys, sitting up on the fleece blanket downstairs, for quite a long time. He talked a lot and rolled about and looked normally energetic. He had a bath with Daddy around 5.30pm and enjoyed that, and splashed with his feet and gnawed on the rubber duckie’s beak (bill, probably, but I like the word “beak” better!). When we took his nappy off for the bath, he had peed!! Yay! But not a huge one, and it was yellow instead of clear. I have stepped up the nursing a little more and now I offer him the breast about every hour and a half. He is often sleeping longer than that so sometimes he goes 2 hours without nursing, but I am trying. I am letting him have a little more than before too, so I think he is starting to get better quantities of milk now. No more vomiting today so far.

He spent some time on the bed with Neil this evening before bed, and enjoyed standing up and smiling at me, so that was LOVELY to see! He must have been feeling a bit better. In fact, here, you can see for yourselves!...

Isn’t that a welcome sight?! Neil would like it to be known that he IS wearing underwear, hehe! ;) I was so cheered after that anyway.

But after a while he was tired again and I nursed him for bed, but of course he couldn’t nurse to a sleepy state like usual because that takes too long on the breast and he isn’t meant to have that right now :( I hated withholding it from him, especially when he cried. He had quite a lot of milk in between breaks where Neil held him for a while, and he did seem a bit gulpy/gaggy in the end so I’m glad I didn’t give him any more than that. He pretty much had a full side though, which is good, and it hasn’t returned so far! Yay!

He has since been really upset and crying all evening so far :( His teeth hurt him soooo. He is biting on his whole hand stuffed into his mouth and crying round it, doing his “Oh-yoh-yoh-yoh!” thing in very pitiful tones, poor love. We gave him teething powder, which didn’t work, a refrigerated wet wash cloth to chew which worked while he had it and then he was upset again. And then Bonjela. And a firm gum massage. And chewing on my fingers. He is still just as upset with his teeth, and the only thing left is painkillers, which I am reluctant to offer him, as they will fill his tummy up with syrupy goo. Hmmm. Neil has been rocking him to sleep for about 30 minutes, but he has cried through a lot of that, and just now he was asleep and quiet for 10 minutes until Neil put him gently down, and then he woke and cried. It’s so hard for him. And us. I hate that he is in pain and not happy. I so wish his teeth would HURRY THE HECK UP!!! He has proved the hereditary theory wrong by being older than both his parents were when they got their first tooth. Tsk. Poor boy.

Another break to help Neil with Arthur. We just gave him Calpol. He was rubbing his red cheeks and ears and sobbing right up until I spooned the first bit into his mouth, and then an amazing transition took place! He was all smiley! He opened his mouth for it and everything. When I made an exaggerated gulping sound to encourage him to swallow it, he giggled so hard some of it came spluttering back out again! It was so nice to see him that happy. While Neil went to get a cloth to wipe him up, I confess I gulped and gulped and gulped, just to see him laugh and giggle over and over. Ahh it was lovely to see his happy little face again! Anyway he took the medicine well. After that I nursed him again because his giggling had given him hiccups, and when the milk was coming down fast enough to fix his hiccups, I let him suck a few moments longer and then stopped. I don’t want to overload his tummy. I wish wish wish I could just let him nurse till he’s brimming like normal, or almost asleep. Neil took him to rock him to sleep, and Arthur cried :( But it’s gone quiet now so I think he’s asleep. Now Neil just has to put him down and not have him wake, and then I think he will sleep till we go to bed or later. I think his medicine will work to ease his pain, which is a good thing.

Okay this has been started and stopped enough times, and I want to let you guys know that everything is okay. Thank you for praying for us! I really appreciate everyone thinking of us and praying for Arthur. He is getting better and I am so relieved! Now for the week ahead. I hope he will be feeling much better tomorrow and that I can start lengthening his feeds again. I am planning to “dream feed” him (nurse him without waking him) every hour and a half or so this evening, just for a short time to get his fluids up. We’ll see how we go.

Tomorrow he has his hip X-ray at the hospital and his review for his feet. He hasn’t been using his night boots for a week or two as he half prised one of his boots off during the night one night, and by the morning it had made a nasty pressure sore on his heel and another on the side of his foot. So we have been resting that foot since then to let it heal. The other foot is the one he no longer needs the night boot for anyway. I hope the physio will be okay with that when we see her tomorrow, and I hope she’ll tell us he doesn’t need to wear them any more anyway!

I need to catch up on sleep. Also I think I need to pump Right Breast again. It is feeling kind of solid and uncomfy. Arthur did a good job on Mrs. Left earlier. Okay, I am going now. I am going to ice my back and watch Pride and Prejudice (for the fifty millionth time!). Thank you again for being wonderful! xxx

Night googling and scared

2.53am and I'm up googling things like "baby cold vomiting", and "baby cold bloodstained mucus". Urgh. Things are not going well. Please can someone help? Should I be worried?

Arthur slept well all evening, and when he woke around 10.30 I nursed him till he went back to sleep. He slept again after about 5 minutes or so, which I guess gave him an okay feed. My breasts are engorged for the first time in ages so I know he is not eating like he normally would. Plus the vomiting. He did not pee for 6 hours this afternoon, but when we took his dry nappy off to put him in a night nappy at bedtime, he peed on the bed :) Strong smelling pee though. I know he must be getting dehydrated. I feel scared.

Anyway it's good that he nursed back to sleep like that, but my breast was still very full afterwards, though less engorged, so he didn't have a whole breastful. And three hours later when he woke again, it was engorged again. This time we changed his nappy, and Neil says it was wet but I don't know how wet. Then he was pretty awake. I nursed him in bed and my darn milk just came too fast for him. I took him off several times to let the flow slow down, but it just wouldn't slow. It is starting to frustrate me so much. He took a pretty huge feed and seemed hungry, and then came off the breast and immediately (I didn't even have time to move away) vomited everything back up, quite violently. I picked him up and he just kept throwing up. He must have brought up the whole lot. The amount was excessive and it seems to be more so all the time.

So after we calmed him down Neil changed the sheets again and I brought Arthur in here to google things. I am scared and worried about him. Why is he being sick like this? Why can't he keep anything down? Nothing I am finding on colds online says anything about vomiting like Arthur is. He isn't coughing to make him vomit, and it is getting worse. He is now returning almost all of every single feed, whereas a couple of days ago when it started, he only did it once in a day after a bout of coughing. I don't understand what is going on with him.

Also his snot is very bloodstained, and that freaks me out. It was this morning, and now it is again. Neil has bloody snot all over his t-shirt. Arthur is just miserable. I took his temperature again, this time with the normal thermometer that goes under the arm, and it was 37.3. I am so mad with that stupid ear thermometer. I have been checking him so carefully with it when he felt warm to me, in case he had a fever, and it always showed me normal temperatures so I didn't think anything more of it. Right after I took his temperature under the arm, I tried using the ear thermometer and it said 35.6. Crappy thing. Obviously we don't know how to use it, or else it is just crap and inaccurate. Either way we need to throw it away and go with the good old fashioned one. When Neil was holding Arthur trying to soothe his whimpery sounds and help him fall asleep (maybe 30 minutes later), I took his temperature again and it was 37.4.

He is much less snotty in general this evening, though after he had been crying it seemed to be back full force, with blood in it. When we changed his nappy before I nursed him, he seemed absolutely back to his old self, chatting happily and wriggling everywhere while we tried to change him, bouncing on his hands and knees on his front, etc.

I am finding myself scared to nurse him in case I am making him sick. Why can't my milk be more gentle for him? Neil said I should pump some out first, but to be honest it just lets down so fast throughout the feed when my breasts are this full. Arthur gulps hungrily and I can't stop him getting a ton of milk too fast.

He is waking and crying, so I'm going. We will call a doctor tomorrow. I'll let you know how we get on. Please please pray for Arthur.

Arthur's cold again

Another entry! I just posted the mammoth one that I wrote last night and had to post in my pregnancy journal because of Diaryland being stoopid. But here I am again.

Thank you so much for the well-wishes for my little one, and the advice about cold remedies, etc. I have been checking his temperature really frequently with our ear thermometer, because he feels so warm, but he never has a fever. He is just hot and stuffy with cold.

One thing though - is it normal that he is being sick so much? He hasn't really kept down his feeds today. I think his tummy is so full of junk, and when I feed him I am starting to get annoyed that the poor little love gets no choice but to gulp down gallons of fast-flowing milk. This is a wonderful gift, I know. But right now it is working against Arthur I think. This afternoon a few hours ago, Neil went out to get some food because we have like a packet of frozen peas in the whole house (!), and he left me nursing Arthur in bed, hoping he would nap as he seems so tired out. He fed well, but then made some faces which I am beginning to recognise as "I feel sick" faces. Poor boy. I burped him and then I put him back down, as he really wanted to sleep. As he rolled over he vomited so much stuff that it didn't disappear into the sheets, it just puddled and rolled into me down my full body length! Ew. I picked him up and he just kept on throwing up. This is the 5th time now since he started his cold, but it's not like a gastric bug where they throw up frequently to flush a bug out. He did a big poo during the night which we had been waiting on for a few days (!) but it was normal and fine, no diarrhoea. He is getting a little more distressed now about the vomiting.

Anyway, no clean sheets as we had changed a sicky bed twice in the past 12 hours, so I didn't really know what to do with him when he finished being sick. We were both covered so in the end I got in the shower with him. He has never had a shower before! He seemed like he would have been interested if he wasn't feeling so poorly. I got out and wrapped him snug in a huge bath towel, and tucked the edges under him so he couldn't wriggle free, and then laid him on the bath mat while I hurried to wash in the shower. He watched me from the bath mat till I was done. Only his face was peeping out from the towel, even the top of his head was covered, but he didn't move at all. Only his eyes moved and he never smiled. He is so not himself and it breaks my heart :(

After that I got us dressed and took him downstairs. He quickly got inconsolable and I couldn't soothe him from crying no matter what I tried. He was biting his fist and shaking with the effort his was putting into the biting, and at the same time he was screaming out and sobbing :( Poor little guy. To be teething so bad on top of such a nasty cold. Well I nursed him just a little on the sofa in my arms, and then I rocked him upright, dancing to music again, until he went to sleep.

Okay I just took a break from writing this for an hour or two, because Arthur has just been inconsolable. I never heard him cry like this before, and it is almost making me tearful myself because I just do not know what it is that is hurting/bothering him. I mean, he is teething and has a bad cold, but I wish I knew specifically what is upsetting him so much.

We just spent like 2 hours this afternoon rocking him downstairs until the one rocking him got too tired, and then the other one took over. He cried so hard, and only stopped when he fell asleep without realising :( I don't know what is wrong. To be honest I am starting to feel a bit scared to see him like this. I don't know why. I just want it to stop.

He seemed in so much bother with his poor teeth, gnawing and screaming, so eventually we gave him Calpol for some pain relief. I was worried to give him any because of the goopy quality of the stuff, and how his tummy has been, but we managed to get it down him, and then Neil held him upright for 20 minutes. Good thing too, because he dozed off, and when we took him upstairs to change him for bed, he woke and cried so so hard. We just couldn't console him :( Then he threw up again on the bed. He is starting to find this really distressing, and cries quite frantically when he even burps now. Poor love. I wish I could know exactly what is scaring or hurting him, so that I could reassure him on it or make it go away. I just don't know exactly what it is. I feel so helpless.

He would not calm down and his sobs were getting kind of out of hand, like he would throw up again if he carried on, and he was sweating a lot with the effort, so we stripped him down completely, even the nappy, and I nursed him on a pillow on my lap. I took him off the breast twice when my milk let down strongly, which he was upset about, but I feel it was the right thing to do to let that milk go into a towel and not surging down his throat into his poor spasmy tummy. After that he pretty much just latched on and gave the occasional flutter suck. He did calm down very fast when I nursed him. Such a huge relief to have this to fall back on! I almost cried with relief when I put him to the breast and he calmed down. I was beginning to think nothing would calm him ever.

We brought him downstairs and he perked up and became happier and more like himself than he has all day! Yay! He even giggled a bit when I pretended to be a doggy biting his fingers off (!! this does sound a bit drastic, but he LOVES when I bark like a doggy and snuffle his fingers like I'm eating them!). Then he played for a while on the fleece blanket with his stacking rings and his bead cube. I just about cried to see him so normal again.

After that he got sad again, so we took him to bed. I nursed him (nervously!) lying down in bed, and surprisingly he went straight out like a light. After 10 minutes or so he woke and Neil rocked him till he was asleep again. He hasn't stirred since, and it's 7.30pm now, so hopefully a "normal" evening ahead, one where we can catch our breath and rest our aching backs (Neil's back is hurting him today too), and Arthur can get some good "mending" sleep. I think we may be in for a bit of a bad night, but we'll see.

Here I am with my poor Boo this afternoon, during a brief patch of unconsciousness. I just watched and watched him. I hate seeing him so poorly. He woke 3 minutes after this photo was taken, and cried :(

Poor sausage. See my red bitten fingers? I chew them so much more when I am stressed or nervous about things. I almost ate my knuckles today!

I am hungry. Neil is making dinner. He is a wonder man. I have photos of my two boys all naked, heh. They are cute and do not contain any pendular soft parts, but I still won't post them online. Arthur is reaching for Neil's face with all his arms and legs as Neil leans over him whilst changing his nappy after they took a bath together. And Neil is mid-smile/complimentary chatter with Arthur. The look on his face is wonderful. I love how he loves Arthur so much. The photos just look so lovely. My boys :)

I am attempting to catch up a bit on emails and messages, but gosh I am so behind, it might take me a while! I also updated my Fertility Friend homepage! Yay! I am excited about that, even though it will be a while before we are TTC and charting and all that stuff yet. I *am* charting though, just because it's so much fun! And I want to see what my cycles are doing. I want that luteal phase to lengthen out. It is making me antsy, watching it sit there all short and no-baby-for-you ish. Also I changed my 6 month breastfeeding goal blinkie to a 7 month one! Yay :)

Dum de dum. How lovely that suddenly the day has come to a point where I can sit here saying dum de dum! It has been the most demanding and chaotic day ever. I need to ice my back. But I just finished setting Neil up downstairs on the sofa with the ice pack behind his back. He is such a wuss about it! Wincing at the cold, etc and saying how he doesn't want any ice! He has low back pain today like I've been having, and I know from my osteopath that you need to ice it when that happens. So I set him up with no nonsense! He is watching the tennis highlights and bearing the pain of the ice, hehe! After he's done, I'll refreeze the gel pack and then do my back. I don't care about my back pain one bit. It is worth it for how I have been able to hold my baby today when he has needed me.

Oooh Wimbledon tennis is starting soon! Yay! I love Wimbledon. I can't wait for it to start. Most other tennis tournaments bore me, but I have always loved Wimbledon. It's very local to me so maybe that's why? But nope, I think it's more than that. I just love it. Except that Neighbours and Doctors take a hiatus while the tennis coverage is on for 2 weeks, humph. They are my favourite TV programmes, but I don't always get to watch them these days.

Arthur loves it when I clap my hands! He likes to hold them while I clap, sitting up facing me on the floor. I sing "Wind the bobbin up" with him (an actions song for little ones that I learnt when I volunteered at a hospital playgroup for a while once). He loves that song, because he likes me to do the actions with his hands on mine, and then I hold his hands and make them do the actions, and he likes that too. When I clap his hands together, he makes his fingers straight now and tries to help me clap his hands. He used to just make fists!

Okay I guess I have run out of things to say. Ohhh but I actually sewed some nappies recently!!!! I finally set the sewing machine up in the kitchen so I can sew during the evenings without disturbing Arthur upstairs. I had so much fun actually sitting at the sewing machine again and creating a nappy from scratch for Arthur to wear! I always loved doing that, and I haven't had the chance in so long. I made him another one of my successful night nappies (the only things he wears at night now) - the pocket stuffables made from terry towelling on the outside and microfleece on the inside. And I have sewed a Cuddlebun!!! Those are hard so I am proud of myself. I need to hammer on the snaps and sew the label on now, and then it's finished. I will be sure to post a photo, because it's been so long since I posted a nappy photo and I love this nappy! It's hemp :) And cute. Oh yes.

Okay I will go and ice my back now. It's 8pm and Arthur is still sleeping peacefully. He is breathing quietly too which is good. I hope he will start to improve in leaps and bounds now. He hasn't sneezed at all today, so that sneezy ill part of the cold is over with. Now just the gunky stage, and then the drying up, watch-out-for-ear-infections stage (oh joy), and then he'll be ALL BETTER!! Yay! Thank you all for thinking of my little one. Please pray for a good night for him and no more vomiting. xxx

Poor Arthur (and 7 months old!)

Urgh. Diaryland has just been total crap for 24 hours. I had to post this entry (that I wrote last night) into my pregnancy journal (still have Gold there) just to get it posted! But now I can update here I am moving the entry. So here it is:

Phew. A moment to write! Sorry I have been a few days. I will fill you in shortly, but first….

Oh my goodness, you guys are so nice to me! I know I do not suck :) And thank you for your supportive words and messages. I am so rubbish at replying to messages – still have several notes left for me that I STILL mean to reply to, I’m so sorry if this is you! Thank you for the advice in my guestbook (and notes) about sleep issues. Eiluned, thanks for taking the time to outline a routine for me, that was so helpful. Heather thanks for telling me about the magazine with the freebie in it. I will try to remember to buy it before it disappears off the shelves! Polly thank you for the wise words and for signing my guestbook after all this time (!!) – congrats on your little boy! And yes, I did watch “Why Don’t You?” when I was young – thanks for the good advice in a useful context, hehe! Heather, thanks for your wise wise words. My, there are so many wiiiiise mothers out there! I’m so glad they think to share their wisdom with me! Thanks Laura for the notes about slings and night diapers – very helpful sites! And thank you Michelle for the kind offer of sending me a Baby Safe Feeder from the US – thankfully Polly just pointed out that I can buy them in the UK at www.thebabycatalogue.com so I will order one there! I know we must email. We are going through toooo much of the same thing to sit here NOT emailing! ;) Also thank you to Julie and Nicola for the lovely lovely emails. You see?! You guys are just the nicest people. I am so blessed to have such friends here online :) I hope I did not miss anybody out! I don’t normally make such specific references to people for their notes or messages, but this time I really wanted to. I was so blessed by you all.

Ohhhhh-kay.

Well I have various things to write about, but it’s late (surprise, surprise) and I’m tired (well well!) so we’ll see how much I get done. If I have to stop this short and post it tonight just so I get this much out there for now, then I will. But I hope I can write about everything first. Wait, I need a glass of water. Then I will be back for the long haul (I hope!)!!!

Waaater. Sooo thirsty tonight!

Well Arthur is seven months old!!! My big boy!! His Uncle Ian (Neil’s older brother) came to see him on Monday evening (he was 7 months on Thursday), and guess what he got for his 7 month birthday?! His first cold :( Poor, poor Boo. On Wednesday I had an osteopath appt in the morning which went well (though I still need a lot more treatment for a while) and I learnt some new exercises which should help my back get stronger in the right places. I had a bad headache all day that day. Arthur was going to have a walk with Daddy while I had my appt but he was so tired that morning and his naps did not work well around my appt time, so he ended up falling into a deeeep sleep in his car seat just as we arrived to meet Neil for the “handover” (!!). So Neil got in the driver’s seat and drove him to the park and looked at the ducks on the lake while Arthur slept for about 45 minutes! Then they came back to meet me, and Arthur woke as I arrived :) So he napped, which was good. In the afternoon, Arthur was a bit cranky and not that well settled for sleep, and he wasn’t happy for long with any activity. It was a nice sunny day with a cool breeze so we went out for a walk round the local small park, which is actually quite nice, though I don’t feel that safe there as it’s not the nicest area. Ugh. Anyway, I was careful to use his sunshade and walk in the shade with him, or if I was in the sun then I walked with the sun behind us.

I did notice around this time that he was sneezing more than usual and coughing a little more than his usual occasional splutters! I started to worry that he was developing hayfever because it seemed to have coincided with our walk. How awful that would be, to have allergies like hayfever at such a young age! But he did not have red or watery eyes, and he wasn’t clawing at his nose or anything so I figured probably not. I couldn’t believe he might be getting sick, because I don’t know… he has never been unwell before. He DID get exposed to the nasty flu that we had over Christmas, and he got a fever but it never seemed to develop. I am thinking that was to do with my milk, since I had the flu badly and would have been churning out some serious anti-viral agents around then! But mostly I praise God that I asked him to protect Arthur and somehow Arthur never got really sick. I am so grateful.

So he has never been unwell. Also it is June. He has been fine this whoooole long winter with bugs left, right, and centre!! Why now, in JUNE?!! But by Wednesday evening he had a runny nose and was sneezing even more, and he was restless in the evening, coughing in his sleep and waking himself up, and then sneezing a lot when he woke. It did seem mild at the time, and I thought well at least he has my milk to help him fight it.

But my poor baby, Thursday was a little worse, he was snotty and exceptionally sneezy – he sneezed and sneezed all day, like sometimes 20 times in ten minutes!! He had so much mucus and goo going down to his tummy that he was sick after his feed in bed mid-morning. I am proud that this didn’t send me into a huge panic attack, but then I knew it was to do with his poor cold, and not a tummy bug. Also some weird “mother button” clicked in, a very similar feeling to the “nurse button” I used to have when I was doing my midwifery and nursing training, and looking after Cameron in hospital. I love those buttons. They enable me to be cool as a cucumber over things that would normally freak/gross me out if I didn’t have that button pressed. I am lucky also, in that I don’t usually have to think about pressing the button. It seems to be automatic. So I am delighted to discover that I have a “mother button”!! It made the difference between panicking, and sitting calmly with Arthur on my lap, catching big slaps of sick in a towel (well, missing most of it!) and reassuring him with soothing words and kisses on his soft fuzzy head all the while. Poor Arthur. He did not seem distressed at all, which probably helped me enormously. He seemed so happy after he was sick, like his tummy must have been feeling yucky till it emptied. The cot-bed came into marvellous use as I laid him in there with a toy while he watched me take my sicky clothes off and change, take the sicky sheets off the bed and put fresh ones on, and finally take his sicky sleepsuit off and clean him up and dress him. It took me a while to figure out what order to do the cleaning in! I figured it should be me first so that I didn’t re-sickify everything I touched. Then the bed so I would have somewhere clean to lay Arthur when he was changed. Then the pukey boy himself! He seemed quite contented to watch me, much better for less goo in his tummy. I put everything straight in the machine and it was clean and dry again before the end of the afternoon!

But Arthur has been so poorly since then. Last night was his first bad bad bad sick night. He couldn’t sleep for longer than 10 minutes all night, until around 4am when he suddenly fell into a rattly-breathing exhausted sleep and I collapsed on the spare bed to lose consciousness till he woke again at 5.50. I had not been able to doze between his wakings, and he was so distressed whenever he was awake, crying and sobbing inconsolably, and unable to breathe or swallow past the goo in his throat. He rubbed and rubbed his nose and eyes so hard, they must have been so irritating. To make matters worse, he is suddenly teething really badly, and seems to have teething pain like never before. His cheeks are red and puffy again and he is clawing at his ears and moaning like he does when his teething gets super-bad. We have given him teething powder but it never does work so well when he’s particularly bad. He has had quite a few doses of Calpol these last few days. It’s hard getting it into him because he cries and doesn’t want to swallow it, and there seems SO much of the darn stuff for him to have to ingest! It’s just so sickly and syrupy, and I don’t blame him for not wanting all that in his tummy when it’s already full of goop and feeling yucky. I try to keep him calm when he has just had Calpol so that he won’t throw up from coughing or sobbing, and then hopefully it will stay down. He sometimes acts like he needs to be sick after he has Calpol, when he already has goop in his tummy. Poor boy.

So today has been worse. He is still sneezing aplenty, and his cough has become quite bad and rattly. Today he had a fit of coughing on his side in bed just after nursing almost to sleep, and that made him be sick a bit too. Then he was awake and crying because he couldn’t breathe or get comfy. My heart HURTS for him to see him this unhappy and uncomfortable. I wish with all my being that I could make him feel better or take away the things that are nasty. I wish I could do more than soothe him. I know my presence and soothing actions make a world of difference for him, but it just never feels like enough when he is suffering, you know? When he breathes, the sound of gunk ratching and scrunching back and forth in his nose and throat makes ME want to gag. It’s so loud and horrible. I can’t remove it for him. How I wish he could blow into a hanky! I have one of those nose-clear suction thingies for sucking mucus out of a baby’s nose, and I have been using it a lot today when I see goo visible in his nose. He HATES it when I use it, though I am as gentle as I can possibly be, and it must feel better to him when I get stuff out. But he just hates it and fights me doing it and cries. I rubbed Vick on his chest today, just a little, because the instructions said from 6 months onwards. He did seem a little clearer for it, and he napped better in the afternoon than in the morning. This morning (all day really) he has been so exhausted. I guess his night was so awful and he is sick so extra tired. He could not sleep this morning for more than 10 minutes, more often it was just 2 or 3 minutes before he turned restlessly and woke from coughing or choking on goo, then he would cry and cry so he wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep after that. This afternoon after some Calpol and mucho back-breaking rocking and Vick on his chest, he did nap for an hour, and then after 40 very upset minutes of more rocking and nursing and nose-suctioning, he crashed out with tears still on his poor red cheeks for almost 2 hours.

He has cried soooo much these last couple of days. I just know he feels soooo unwell. My poor darling love. It has been a different perspective for me. Since he got sick, I don’t give a monkeys about how long he is sleeping or whether I get mine. All I care about is being absolutely THERE for him 24 hours a day the moment he needs me, and making sure I do everything I can to ease his suffering to the best of my ability. My back injury (this might not have been wise) could take a running jump for all I care. I will just have to get extra treatment on it and put up with extra pain in the meantime. My little love needed to be HELD all day today. He cried like his heart was breaking if I put him down, although I did have to anyway a couple of times to get food for me to eat or to go to the loo. He was okay after the initial few moments once he found a toy next to him to play with. I can see he is trying to be in his normal happy mood, but he just feels too bad. If I do things that normally make him laugh and giggle, he doesn’t giggle, which is so sad! But he does smile, a funny weak sort of smile that almost tells me he is smiling because he knows I am trying to cheer him up and he appreciates it. Bless his heart. Today I held him clasped to my front with both arms, and danced him to a CD of Christian music for an hour. An HOUR!! My back hurt so much I can’t tell you. But Arthur could breathe better that way, and the rocking and motion lulled him, and I sang along quietly with the music which also soothed him, and his eyelids got heavier and heavier, and eventually he went to sleep against me. It was his first easy sleep all day so I wanted to keep going as long as I could. I danced him in front of the big mirror so that I could see him clearly, and he kept opening his eyes to look into mine in the mirror, like he was checking I was still there or something, and then they would droop shut again and he’d be off. Eventually the CD ended and my arms hurt more than my back even, so I slowwwly sat down, but he woke when I sat, and cried :(

He had a bath with Daddy tonight, and I made the bath with baby breathe-easy bubble bath. He seemed happier after his bath. He had so much snot in his hair! Poor thing. I felt like a “real” mother today! My t-shirt is covered in snot, tears, milk, sick and drool. Covered. I am still wearing it. Gross, you might think? I know I need to take it off and put something clean on, but it’s dry and not as stinky as it sounds, and somehow when I look down at my chest and see dry snot (!!) I feel my heart go tender because it makes me think of my poor baby boy who needs to be close to me so much at the moment. His various bits of goo are on my t-shirt because of how close he needed to be to me at his sickest moments today, and actually this makes me feel like the most blessed, privileged person alive right now. I Am Mummy! I belong to the most precious little boy, and he belongs to me. I am Mummy. I am his. He is mine.

D’you know what else I remembered today, on that line of thought? I am God’s. He is mine. My struggles and falls and mistakes and so on are similar to the various stains on my t-shirt, as God holds me through my ups and downs. He holds me as I have held Arthur today, because he loves me like I love Arthur – MORE so even! My brain boggles at such a concept. How could ANYONE love anyone more than I love my precious boy? But God does love me more. Thank you Julie for reminding me of this today with the various things you said to me and just your own heart for God.

Well, my baby Boo stirs, so I may have to stop in a moment. He took a long time to go to sleep tonight and cried till he started gagging. He coughed such a lot too. Every time he would start to settle his little head into the bed and close his eyes for sleep, his nose would stifle his breathing, and his mouth would pop open to gasp, and then after a breath or two, would close again, and I’d hear his breathing stifle in his nose again till his mouth popped open again. After a few times of this he would toss and turn to try and find a way out of it, and then finally open his eyes and cry his poor little heart out, sobbing and coughing and “Oh-yo-yo-yohh”ing. It just about broke my heart. In the end, Neil went out to by some stuff called Karvol, which is a capsule of stinky head-clearing stuff that you break onto a tissue near a little-one’s head so they can breathe more clearly during sleep. While he was gone, I held Arthur, who retched hugely but wasn’t sick, rocked and sang to him, and finally he went to sleep upright on my front. My bac hurt so much, so I eased myself down on the bed and sat against the pillows with some sort of superhuman strength in my left arm taking Arthur’s full unconscious weight! I sang Enigma Variations to him tonight, well, hummed and laahed them! I just love that music. I find it so beautiful and soothing, and I didn’t have a CD player to hand or a spare arm to fetch one, so I hummed it, hoping Arthur would find it soothing too. He did seem to, and I kept on singing it after he fell asleep, till Neil got home about 10 minutes later. Arthur was so unconscious by this point that he didn’t even stir as I got up and turned him around in my arms, and laid him down on the bed. Once he was down on his back, his breathing sounded so clattery and awful that I turned him onto his side so he wouldn’t have so much going down his throat. He didn’t even stir. Neil put the stinky stuff near him (but out of reach) and we retreated. He has coughed and stirred and even started to cry several times this evening since, but each time we get to him and he’s already asleep again. I think he is just so exhausted, the poor thing. It’s now 11.23pm and he has been asleep since about 7.40.

Here are a couple of photos of my poor boy, the first one taken yesterday and the second one this morning. He is so much worse this evening, and I guess tomorrow could be a pretty gunky day too, but after that I hope he will at least start to FEEL better, even if his gunk levels stay high for a while yet. Colds are so horrid. Arthur is so precious. It just feels so awful to see him unwell. Here is my poorly boy:

I think that is basically all that has happened since I last wrote. Everything has been dominated by Arthur being unwell, and having no sleep and how I feel about my little one. Neil has been home this afternoon as we were going to go up to Yorkshire to see his parents over the weekend (spur of the moment) because it is his mum’s 60th birthday on Sunday. But we can’t go with Arthur ill, so he worked half the day and came home the other half to help with Arthur. He is wonderful. There is noooo way that either of us has escaped being exposed to this cold. I see now why it’s almost impossible for parents to miss bugs and colds when they have tiny ones who are sick with them! If they are sick, it goes everywhere. If they have colds, every five minutes you are bathed in a fine mist spray of viral particles! I have felt under the weather yesterday and part of today, just yucky with an odd throat, and like I am coming down with something. But I have prayed about it, and taken extra vitamin C, and just kept going really. This morning my yucky feelings started to fade out, and I haven’t felt unwell since, so hopefully I have fought it off.

One thing I feel blessed about through this is my milk. For Arthur, these last couple of days, my milk has been nourishment, extra fluids, comfort, throat soother, gunk diluter, and most importantly, anti-viral medicine specific to Arthur’s cold. I love this about breastfeeding. I hope that it means Arthur has suffered less than if I had not been nursing him, although he has suffered quite badly anyway, and I hope that he will recover quickly now. Either way he has been getting “medicine milk”, and I am especially glad that I have been fighting the virus myself because I’ll be making a good bug-buster to go in his snacks and meals! When I wish I could do more than just soothe him, this comes the closest to that, but it still doesn’t feel like enough. Still, I am so grateful for breastfeeding. Once or twice I found it difficult that my milk came down so fast and free, because he had such a full tummy and only wanted to suck for comfort, but down came lots of milk and he had to take it into his poor tummy if he wanted to stay sucking for comfort, which I was kind of irked about. I get a second heavy let-down after each 5 or 10 minutes that he is nursing so when he wants to suck for say 30 minutes just for comfort till he is asleep, it means he has 3 occasions or so where he is forced to gulp down milk that he doesn’t want or need. I thought about taking him off the breast to let that milk go in a towel or something, but he was unhappy to come off the breast so I let him stay. I guess in hindsight, because it did stay down, he probably did better for the extra milk, with it being fluids and immune boosters, etc. But other than that one quirk, all the milk is a wonderful blessing that I am thankful for!

Arthur is still asleep, though he has been coughing a few minutes ago, and I think I will finish this up and join him. I have been sleeping next to him. He likes to be physically in contact with me the moment he needs to be, so if I’m right there, he can choose to roll away and sleep as normal, or roll into my body and have his mummy-contact that he needs right now. I cherish it. It takes the edge off the awful feelings that I can’t do much for him like I wish I could, while he’s ill. But I don’t get much sleep!

Okay, I’ll write again soon, I hope! Thank you for wishing Arthur a happy 7-month birthday! And I am not an auntie yet, Jemma - it is driving me crazy with anticipation!! I know it must be soon. Rosemary’s due date is today! I will let you know as soon as I find out, of course! :) Thanks again everyone, for the lovely support you gave me! xxx

Aaaaaaaaargh, darn stupid Diaryland is busy all the time and won’t let me update!!!! But I have to go to bed. What will I do? I really want to post this tonight. I think I will leave the computer on till Arthur’s nappy change in the middle of the night, and see if I can just click a button and copy/paste it in to post it then. I don’t really want to wait till tomorrow. Tsk. And I have gold membership still at alicesbaby! How frustrating! I could update there if it was the right diary. Stoopid darn Diaryland!! Hope you are reading this shortly after I write it, and not the next day!

Well, obviously this IS the next day! Just wanted to add that Arthur slept SIX HOURS from 7.40pm to 1.40am last night!! He stirred and coughed a lot in his sleep but never actually woke properly or needed our help to resettle. I don’t know if this is just because he’s ill though, and thus zonked. Around 2am we changed his nappy, and I fed him. He was super-hungry. My breasts were like rocks too! The milk came down so fast and he drank so much that he seemed uncomfortable after that. We put new Karvol on his tissue thingy but he was so thick and snotty in his nose that he couldn’t breathe or swallow or sleep. Poor love, he tried and tried to sleep, putting his little body in all his favourite sleepy positions. He seemed more and more uncomfortable until finally he threw up hugely, real vomiting. He was face down on the bed when it started, and I picked him up quick (I was sitting there right next to him with my hand on him) and sat him up on my lap. Neil was there with a big towel and managed to catch the rest of the puke in it. He really did puke. I never saw so much come out of him before! I felt so bad for him, because he must have been feeling sick before that happened. He was happier and clearer in his nose afterwards though. I think he had a tummy half-full of goo and then overstuffed with milk. I’m glad he got rid of the mucusy yuck though. It took us a while to clean up and change the bed again. He went back to sleep around 4am and then woke at 5.50am, when I fed him again and he coughed till he threw up on the bed once more. Not a lot this time though, but enough to need to change everything again. His cough is quite bad now.

This morning he looks poorly with puffy eyes and like he’s been unwell for a few days. He has a snotty nose but it’s better than during the night. He is much more smiley this morning than he has been for a few days, so I’m presuming he feels a little better today. I was hoping he would start feeling less ill soon, so that’s good! He is napping at the moment, his second morning nap so far. He seems to need extra sleep while he’s sick. My poor baby. I just hope he is better soon.

Urrrrrgh, sleep AGAIN! And stuff.

Urgh, too much to say again in one entry! Thank you for the guestbook messages and notes, etc! Michelle, I can’t get the Baby Safe Feeder in the UK :( I looked at their website but I can only order it if I live in the States. Poo. But thanks for mentioning it! And you have noooo need to be jealous of our sleep. That’s news item #1 for this entry:

Sleep issues. I hate always talking about them. But here we go again. We seem to have taken 2 steps forward, and what feels like about 946,034 steps back. Right now everything feels worse than ever with Arthur’s sleep, and I don’t understand why. Anyway, the outcome of this evening is that when I sat in front of the computer to write my diary, at first all I felt like writing was:

I suck.

Also, I suck.

And in conclusion, I suck.

But that wouldn’t explain much to anyone, so I’ll elaborate a bit.

Arthur is still sleeping okay at night, and last night was pretty good – about 3 or 4 hours between each feed. And he fell asleep again well after feeds, and even after the nappy change in the middle of the night. But the previous two nights he was really quite restless and woke a lot. So that felt like we were back to square one a bit. His naps in the day over the weekend have been difficult. And yesterday it was like an all-day battle to get him enough nap-time sleep. That sucked, because it was just tiring and no fun, for either of us probably. Today he has napped much better though. Half an hour this morning, then 30 minutes at lunch time, which I managed to settle him back to sleep after (nursing), and then he slept 90 minutes straight. Then he was tired late afternoon (he usually has 3 naps a day, two short and one long) but when I took him to bed he took an hour of rolling about, screeching (which is starting to drive me crazy, all his piercing, ear-numbing screeching that he seems to be practising constantly these days!) and basically not sleeping – even though he was rubbing his eyes and obviously tired and getting cranky. He did fall asleep eventually though. During that time I lay with him and tried to be patient. It is increasingly difficult to be patient, and I hate that.

But the main thing is that just in these last few nights, Arthur has been extremely difficult to get to sleep at bedtime. I guess maybe we could improve the structure and consistency of our bedtime routine with him, and that might help. But he is sooooo tired at bedtime, he is cranky and sleepy and irritable and rubbing his eyes, etc, etc, basically displaying every possible sign of a tired baby who is ready for bed. I nurse him. He is so so fidgety and distractable on the breast, and he flings his arms everywhere constantly, so I get whacked in the face, breast, arm, glasses, etc. I tried holding him closer or in a way that makes it more difficult for him to wriggle so much, but that just makes him come off the breast all the time to get annoyed, etc. He keeps on popping off the breast to turn away from me and look at the curtains. Then he’ll chat and screech at them, which wakes him up further and wears my nerves down even closer to the wick. I sing, and he listens, but still that doesn’t seem to leave him sleepy enough to prevent the constant wiggling and screeching. When he won’t take the breast anymore, it’s usually because he’s full of air, so Neil burps him. He always has a good few BIG burps! Then back he comes for the other breast. Ditto the above behaviour. Eventually (these days anyway), he is full to the brim of milk but not sleepy enough to fall asleep. He always used to be dropping off to sleep from nursing, but he just seems so ultra-hyper these days, at all times. It’s not just wakefulness, it’s the sheer speed and franticness of his movements and vocalising, it’s odd. I wonder why? Even when he’s tired and annoyed that he isn’t asleep.

Urgh. Anyway, so after he’s full of milk we rapidly run out of tools to help him sleep. Lots of things have worked in the past, including patting and shh-ing, Neil rocking him, etc. The last two nights when this happened, I just kept nursing him, and then giving him to Neil to burp him, and then nursing him, and giving him to Neil to rock him, and then nursing him, etc, etc. Over and over. Last night it took till 8pm (he goes to bed around 6.30) doing this till he finally fell asleep, completely exhausted. He was so tired the whole time, and we were doing the things that most help him to sleep. I don’t understand it. He did then sleep four hours straight though. Tonight I started thinking that maybe it wasn’t helping him to let him fall asleep on the breast or rock him to sleep. I mean, recently Neil has been rocking him to sleep a little more than normal – especially over the weekend. I wondered if maybe that had made things worse? I don’t know. So tonight I said we should try other things, and not rock him. And I wouldn’t nurse him right to sleep, but then I don’t generally do that anyway. He normally nurses till nearly asleep and then either pops off by himself and turns over to go to sleep, or I take him off the breast and he then turns over and sleeps.

Soooo that’s what we tried this evening. Except it went wrong. Really wrong. I nursed him. He fidgeted (and nursed) and rolled, and screeched at the curtains every few moments. Neil burped him. He burped and grabbed at the curtains and screeched and wriggled and twisted in Neil’s arms to see me so he could smile at me, and then he nursed, and so on. Eventually he was full and still totally awake. I guess I felt so…. I don’t know what the word is. Snappy? Worn down? Frustrated? Irritable? I don’t know. All of those. Snarndowfrustitable. Heh. I like making new words :) But anyway. I felt so whatever that I just had to leave the room and take a break. The same happened yesterday evening. Yesterday I took 5 minutes while Neil was in there with Arthur, rocking him or whatnot, and just pottered around downstairs folding laundry or starting dinner, and it did only take 5 minutes for me to feel okay again and go back up to the bedroom when I heard Arthur sounding cross and sleepy.

But tonight Neil wasn’t rocking him, we tried the patting/shh-ing thing instead. Which totally did NOT go down well this evening. And when I took a break, I didn’t feel all nice again in 5 minutes. I just felt more and more resentful. Arthur got more and more tired and more and more angry, and eventually no matter what we tried, he was crying real tears and sounding so sad and angry, how he NEVER sounds. I hate that he cried and felt so upset. He absolutely could not go to sleep, and I think that is what was bugging him the most. That and the fact that he didn’t understand why we weren’t fixing it for him to get to sleep like always. We left him on his own twice for about 5 minutes each time, but both of those times he was happy enough when we left him, just wide awake and rolling and chatting to the curtains, etc. The first time he got cross and I went back. The second time he suddenly had enough and started crying and screaming, so I went back and nursed him. When he was doing that a lot, despite things we were trying, Neil worried that he had teething pain, because that’s the only time he’s really ever cried like this, so we gave him Calpol. He is teething, but then he always is. That’s frustrating me too. Probably not as much as it is Arthur, but there we go.

Anyway. Eventually it was 9pm, I had nursed him almost asleep three more times since the original bedtime feed, and each time he seemed asleep on his side when I got up, but the second I was off the bed he woke and was most upset straight away. Not that I was leaving, but that he was awake. The last time I didn’t even make if off the bed before he woke like that. I tried shh-ing and patting at that point, but he just cried and cried. Eventually, our dinner in the oven attempting to keep warm, Neil lay next to Arthur to shh him, and Arthur cried like his heart was breaking, which half-broke mine, and I escaped to the kitchen to cry, and feel horribly guilty and resentful and annoyed all at once.

I hate that we are starting to spend the whole evening, or the best part of it, fighting to get Arthur to sleep. I hate that he is tired enough for bed from when we put him there and still doesn’t sleep. I hate that he cried tonight. I hate that I am starting to feel resentful towards him over this. I have often resented the situation with his sleep issues, but I don’t really remember feeling resentment towards HIM personally. That is so unfair to Arthur. It is not his fault. But I find myself wanting to just chuck him on the bed and yell at him to “GO TO SLEEP ALREADY!!!” and bang the door shut on my way out. When he cries angrily at me and my patience is worn thin, I want to snap, “Fine! Stay up all evening then. See if I care!” and leave him crying till he tires himself out and sleeps. Sometimes the urge is so strong, because I am so fed up with it all. But as strong as that pull is, there is a stronger pull from the opposite pole, which is that I can’t bear to even think unkindly towards my little one. I feel protective and fierce about someone even thinking the things I just wrote, which obviously clashed horribly, since I’m the one both thinking them and hating myself for thinking them. I can’t bear him to cry and be upset. I want to always be there to “rescue” him from things that are upsetting him, not to be the source of the problem.

In some way or another I feel I am letting Arthur down over the sleep thing. Either by my choice of method, I am depriving him of learning to sleep better, because I won’t use a method that means he cries (what was tonight then?!), or by tightening the reins on things, I am causing him to be upset and therefore letting him down.

Neil came down about 10 minutes after I left them upstairs, by which time I had mopped up a bit and sat sniffling over a plate of tepid pasta and fish fingers. He said Arthur went to sleep at last, with Neil on all-fours over him, saying “shh-SHH…shh-SHH” over and over. Arthur seemed to want to feel enclosed, because when he stirred, he only settled again when he could put his hands on Neil’s arms either side of him. My poor baby :( He just needs physical contact, and comfort, when he is upset and trying to sleep. My irritability is making me deprive him of that when he needs it most. Ugh.

I feel like, for all that hassle and upset this evening, was it even worth it? Have we even gotten anywhere for doing it? If we had rocked him and held him and nursed him until he slept, would he not have slept sooner, or at least not had to cry and be upset? But I lose patience. I get so that I feel like when Arthur is in bed asleep, I finally get to de-stress and have some space and “me” time, otherwise I go crazy. I love spending all my time with Arthur, but I do look forward to his bedtime some days, by the early evening. I am ready for some relaxation and space to think and be me again for a few hours. But lately most of that time is taken up being hugely stressed and trying to get Arthur to bed. So then there’s a teeny tiny chunk of time for me to de-stress, with MUCH more de-stressing needed than normal, and no energy left to enjoy it. Tonight we basically had time to eat our no-longer-hot meal and then go to bed after several hours of putting Arthur to bed. Which really irks me. I am tired out. I should be in bed like Neil. But I neeeeed some time to myself. So I take the time that I need to stop my brain from imploding, and therefore guarantee myself an exhausted tomorrowness, since I will lose out on the extra sleep I am about 50 months behind on.

I can’t help but think crazy things, that everyone will surely tell me to stop dwelling on, but I’m not, they are just in my head and I can’t make them not be. Things like, if Arthur dies tonight, will I be glad that I was working on “training” him to sleep better, or will I wish that I had nursed him and comforted him and given him all the time I could, until he fell asleep peacefully at the breast or in Neil’s arms? There’s obviously no question. Things like that do make me wonder about any sort of sleep training. No matter how you reason it, or benefit from it, or try to make it gentle, somehow it just doesn’t seem natural to me. I would never ever ever ever ever ever ever (ad infinitum) forgive myself if I had spent Arthur’s last night resenting his wakefulness or listening to him cry for the “good” of his sleeping habits, or withholding a type of comfort that he is longing for, to help him sleep, like nursing to sleep or being rocked. Sometimes tonight when I took him off the breast in a sleepy state, his whole body reacted and reached desperately for me, even clawing at my t-shirt once I’d pulled it down, to try and stay nursing so that he could finish falling asleep. At the time I thought it was for the best that I helped him learn to do without. Why though? Not for him. For me. I was the one feeling impatient. Ugh. I am going round in circles.

Basically – trying to mould my baby into any sort of expected sleep habit doesn’t feel right or natural. But letting the current trend continue is doing my head in. I’m getting resentful about it. And tired. And irritable. And none of that is helping Arthur, or me, or Neil. So fix it. But a) it doesn’t feel right, and b) it’s not working. So use a method that works. But a) I will not let him cry. Nope. Not even for four nights (the predicted success time with many methods). Also b) I will not let him cry. Which many methods seem to include, no matter how gently it is managed, it’s still crying. And while he’s crying, my baby is upset, sweating, hyperventilating, and miserable. And c) I will not let him cry.

So where does that leave us?

Urrrrgh. This evening, it leaves me feeling horrible for having been snappy with my little one, and leaving him to cry with Neil while I sulked off downstairs. Now that he’s finally in an exhausted sleep and silent, I wish I could wake him to cuddle him and hold him close in my arms and love him. I wish I could whisper to him as I stroke his soft new hair that I am sorry I was impatient and irritable, and I’m so sorry that he had to cry and feel unhappy and frustrated and angry tonight. And I’m here, and I love him, and I’m not going anywhere. But he’s asleep. So I will save all that up for when he next wakes. Which of course I will do ultra-quietly while I nurse him, so as not to make him all wakeful again. I can’t wait till he wakes again so I can breastfeed him and be a tangible source of comfort for him. I feel like I want to “make up” for something that I took away from him earlier. Whatever that is. I feel bad. Basically, I feel like a truly crappy mother tonight. Crappy. But more so, because it’s not like I was a crappy mother, then I realised it, and now I won’t ever be a crappy mother like that ever again. Nope. I will probably be a crappy mother in the same way tomorrow, when Arthur’s sleep battles recommence and I lose the small sliver of patience that I have left. And I hate that this is likely to happen. I hate even thinking about it. Blah.

Something else. Talk about something else. I want to pull my own hair and slap my own cheek. Or something.

Oh my back! I went to an emergency appt with an osteopath on Sunday. I’m so glad I did! This osteopath is called Lexy and she is sooooo good! Yay! Neil and Arthur came too but they waited downstairs. I felt bad because we were an hour upstairs and I could hear Arthur being bored and cranky sometimes. I feel bad about things a lot lately, related to Arthur. I want him to always be happy (though I know that’s not realistic), and if he’s not then it’s usually something I haven’t fixed for him, so when he’s angry or unhappy it’s personal, and I feel bad. You’re going to tell me I’m wrong. But that won’t change how I feel about it.

Anyway. So I gave the osteopath my history which took a while (birth, pregnancy, rest of my life, etc!) and she looked at my back. She says my right leg is a tad shorter than the left, but probably because my pelvis isn’t fully aligned (which was what gave me the SPD trouble during pregnancy). And most of my height is in my torso (which I know), so the small of my back has an enormous stress-load as the pivotal point for any weight-bearing, etc. Much more so than anyone who is better proportioned than me (about 99.9999% of the human race!). So if my back is going to go wrong then it will be in the lower back area. Which is the bit that hurts. Also she said my joints are really loose. I said, “Oh that’s good!” She looked at me and shook her head. Oh dear. Very loose is bad, apparently. She said all my joints are really loose, and that makes it likely that the bones in my spine are too, which = easy misalignment and more work for the supporting muscles. She said I am sooo lucky I haven’t had a lifetime of back trouble so far! Yikes. Anyway she said we need to tighten and strengthen the muscles in my lower back, to support the oddness of my build (!!), and loosen the muscles at the top because they are tight as a drum. She said that was because of the strain of carrying Arthur during pregnancy, and from the birth, and from carrying him since. I didn’t realise how tight those muscles were till she started trying to loosen them. Oh. My. Ouchness.

Also she did a full treatment on my back, which meant a lot of being pulled about and that hurt sometimes, and that awful “clunk-click” treatment (as they call it), which involves her saying, “Take a deep breath in” and then leaning over me and saying, “…. And out again” and as I start to breathe out, she throws her full body weigh onto my ribcage, with some added force from her arms, and all my breath shoots out in a big gust, and once there is nowt left in there at all, that’s when all the bones in my whole body (well, the ribs and spine anyway) make the most sickening crackles and crunches! Like 10 of them, all at once. It makes ME feel sick, just hearing it! Then she does it again till there’s no more crackling. Yeurgh. Equally horrid is the bit where she’s manipulating my head and neck till it’s kind of hurting from twisting further to the side than I thought it was able to, and then suddenly with my head in her hands, she whips it back to face ahead, and then gives it a split-second twist to the side (further than before), whereupon it cracks most horribly! The weirdest thing is, the point where it cracks makes me yell, “Ow!!” but actually it’s a physical relief to my neck. Odd.

I have homework. I need to ice my back with a gel-pack when it hurts, 15 minutes up to four times a day (none at all so far, but that’s me not getting round to it rather than being pain-free, tsk). And I have to stop sleeping on my tummy – nooooo!! I told her that is the only way I can get to sleep, even when I’m exhausted. I have restless leg syndrome and I can’t bear to be on my back or sides when it’s bad. I’d rather pull my own ears off. Seriously. It’s a horrible sensation. On my tummy, it’s much more bearable, and I fall asleep much quicker that way. She said if I MUST sleep on my front, I should sleep with a pillow under my tummy to support my lower spine. She said sleeping on your stomach is really really bad for the back. In my case even more so, because of my joints being so loose. She said basically my lower spine will be collapsing in on itself overnight as it drops towards my tummy. So far I have managed to sleep on my sides or back once, but the other time I have slept on my tummy with a pillow under me. That wasn’t comfy, but it was miles better than restless legs on my back or sides. And she also gave me homework for my Jaw Joint Malfunction. I have to bite on a pencil across my mouth at the molars, equally on both sides! And try to always chew my food equally on both sides. So I’m trying. It’s weird though.

And probably other stuff. But my head is aching now and I’m getting tired, so I forget what I meant to say. Oh but I have another appt with her tomorrow at 11.20. It’s down the road from where Neil works, so I am taking Arthur to the office and Neil is taking a (very) early lunch to take Arthur for a walk while I have my appt. Lexy said I could bring Arthur with me, but I just thought, it’s up a narrow staircase so I couldn’t take the pushchair. There is very little room for him in the tiny treatment room, and even if there was, he can’t just be put down on the floor. He can’t sit or lie in there properly, and anyway, the session lasts about 40 minutes. He would be bored and cranky after about, ooh, three?! So that wouldn’t work. It’s good that Neil works so nearby. I am going to ask about getting lunchtime appts next time.

Urgh I am getting too tired to write any more. But I didn’t even get to the part where I write lovely happy stuff about being Arthur’s mummy, and about how he’s doing. That’s what I feel like writing about now that I’ve let off steam.

Okay, well he is doing well, other than sleep! He is gorgeous. I love him so much. He laughs and smiles all the time. Earlier today when he was struggling to go to sleep for his nap, I let him roll away from me for the fifty millionth time, hoping he was turning over to go to sleep, and there was a pause and suddenly his head popped up and he started talking to the curtains cheerfully! I felt so exasperated, but this was like the 9th time or something, and suddenly the exasperation flipped into seeing the funny side, and I started to chuckle – but that whispered type of chuckle, where it bearly sounds like you’re making more than a few hushed puffs of air. Amazingly, Arthur seemed to recognise it as a hushed giggle all the same, because he immediately stopped chatting to the curtains, and turned towards me, starting to giggle himself!! I love how this little boy giggles simply because I am laughing! Just to see or hear me laugh makes him happy and giggly, and that’s so lovely. He uses giggling as a way of getting attention, I think. He has developed such a silly cute false laugh!! He uses it a lot, like when Neil and I are talking to each other, all of a sudden there will be a funny chokey laughing sound, and we look at Arthur and there he is, fixing us with a very direct look, coughing out an odd sounding chuckle! He knows we respond with great delight when he laughs and giggles, so I guess he is using it as a method of grabbing our attention when he wants it! I think it’s very sweet, mainly because it’s soooo obviously a fake laugh, but he must think he’s doing a convincing job, hehe! :)

Today for the first time he has been up on his hands and knees – well, not quite knees. More like thighs! He hasn’t quite made it up onto his knees, but they get pulled up near enough, so that he’s resting on his thighs. He rocks and rocks like this. This afternoon he rocked so hard in this position that he shoved himself a few inches forwards in one lunge. It wasn’t crawling as he didn’t move any of his limbs, but he moved forwards in a crawl position. So I guess it will be soon! He was pleased to move forward those few inches, as it brought him within reach of a favourite toy, which he immediately grasped and settled down to play with! I hope that will encourage him to try it again and get crawling. He is getting so frustrated that he can’t move about like he wants to now. He rolls everywhere and at angles, but it isn’t nearly efficient enough for him! He has to roll back and forth many times over to get himself where he’s aiming – say at a toy a few feet away diagonally from him. If he could just propel himself forwards he could get there fast and in a straight line of sight too.

What else? Ohhh I shared another apple with him today. This time I put him in his highchair while I cleaned a bit in the kitchen, and I started eating an apple. I cut him two sticks of apple out of it and he gummed on them a bit and then dropped them on the floor. Then I decided I might as well be steaming some apple for pureeing and freezing while we had some nice organic apples. So I got that going while I continued cleaning. When the sticks of peeled apple that I’d steamed were cool enough, I gave one to Arthur to see what he would do with it. He loved the texture (squashy), but didn’t seem to consider putting it in his mouth! He squished it in his fist until it fell into three sad little squishy pieces on his highchair tray, and then he picked one of those up between finger and thumb and squished it further! After that they were boring and lay discarded on the tray.

Then I pureed the remaining steamed apple, and I was all set to spoon it into ice-cube trays, when I suddenly thought I might try Arthur with some. He hasn’t tried pureed apple yet, and it was warm and fragrant and perfect. Thicker than his other purees, but just like apple sauce really, not too slushy or coarse. I gave him some. He took several spoonfuls, but basically did not seem impressed that I’d shovelled them in his mouth! Hehe. He preferred (as always) to use the spoon himself, so I let him. Here are the photos of Arthur being less than impressed with yet another food!...

Hehehe! He made a lot of soured faces, like that middle photo. I guess apple is much more sour than breastmilk, even though it was a nice sweet eating apple. Anyway, he did swallow it well. He looked kind of gaggy a couple of times, but moved it to the back of his mouth and swallowed very quickly and efficiently each time. We’ll see how we go.

He is 7 months old the day after tomorrow!!! Crazy. Also my SIL is due that day too!! Yay! So excited.

I re-evaluated the signing. I decided that “more” and “eat” are definitely not that relevant for now, so I stopped teaching him “more”. There just weren’t any opportunities to use it in any case. The only thing he really has more of is milk, and we already have a sign for that. I thought about his normal day and what he might like to communicate most if he knew how. I think other than “milk”, he might like to ask to be picked up or put down, but not that often, since I hold him a lot and he likes it. But the main thing I thought he would like to communicate would be something to do with pain (eg. teething) or getting medicine for that. He has teething pain ALL the time, and gets medicine for it in some form every single day. Poor baby. So there is plenty of opportunity for us to teach him a sign about that, and for him to learn and use a sign too. I figured he could learn “pain”, but that’s not so easy to teach with a frame of reference. I might try it anyway. But I thought the most important thing (and easiest) for him to learn would be “medicine”. Easy because it’s like “milk”. He is fussing and rubbing his ears. I say, “Do you need some medicine?” and sign “medicine”. I get the teething powder or Calpol or gel or whatever, and when he sees me holding it, I sign medicine again. I ask him again if he wants medicine and sign one more time with it. Then I give it to him. Right after that I sign “medicine”. That’s a really easy one, and I think he’d learn it fast and be able to use it to ASK us for medicine when he needs it. That would be so great! We’d also be able to tell if he really needed it by his reaction to the sign once he has understood it. The only thing is, I can’t seem to find a sign for medicine anywhere! I’ve looked in the books and websites – nada. Sooo I made one up! :) I just picked a one-handed sign that is easy to make and unique from his normal hand mannerisms. After fiddling with my hands for a while (!), I decided on a sign where I point with my forefinger across my body, and raise and lower the whole hand at the wrist, sort of like shaking my hand at the wrist but with only my finger pointing. I don’t know why I settled on that one. It just seemed easy.

So today we have given Arthur medicine for his teeth twice (powder). I have stopped calling it “powder” when I give it to him, and started calling it medicine. It was easy to teach him this sign today! He watched my hand attentively, took the powder (very pleased!) and watched me sign it again whilst saying “medicine” clearly. The next time we gave him powder was when Neil had just got home from work. I explained the plan to Neil and showed him the sign. Neil signed it to Arthur and gave him the powder. When he signed it to him again after giving him the powder, Arthur made his hand into a fist with his forefinger pointing across his body (but not moving) as he watched Neil sign it!!! Clever boy :) So I think he will learn this one fast. It’s probably one he will be eager to use, to communicate with us about his poor teeth.

Hmmm, what else? It’s after midnight now (soooooo silly) so I should go to bed. Arthur has been asleep since he finally went out at around 9.10pm, so three hours so far, which is great. I hope we have a good night. Arthur needs it really, he will be extra tired from such a late bedtime.

Here is a photo of my little man enjoying a bubbly bath with his daddy! He loves the bubbles, and we take care to froth them up as much as possible while we’re running the bath. He also loves a nice deep bath! He likes it when he can sit on the bottom and the water comes up to nearly his chin! Although when he dips his head forward (as he likes to do to see the bubbles!), he often comes up again with a bubble-moustache and beard, hehe! Sometimes I wonder what he would make of a bath sitting on his own. He has never had one. I don’t think he’d be crazy about the couple of inches of water he’d be sitting in (safely) if he was on his own in the bath. Anyway, here he is in his nice deep bubbly bath!...

We are testing out Tots Bots nappies again. They are such lovely nappies, but he outgrew the size 2s a while ago. I heard that they make a size 3 for preschoolers (haha!), so I decided to buy him two – one white and one unbleached. Both with aplix, which is annoying since I prefer poppers or snappi fastenings, but they only come in aplix for size 3s. Arthur can undo aplix, I have now discovered! And enjoys it too! ;) Anyway, I also bought a really nice PUL wrap in size 3 from Tots Bots, but it’s not on their website. It’s a new PUL print, really nice! So he is wearing them and they fit him! They are also the first nappies he has worn in ages that have some extra room for him to grow!!! I love them. I cut out the fabric for making another towelling/microfleece stuffable nappy today, during Arthur’s lunchtime nap. I need to sew it now. They are all he uses at night now, as they can be stuffed with anything absorbent and get covered with a wrap so they don’t leak. They fit him generously and work wonderfully with a toddler size Stacinator So-Simple Wrap. My huge boy! The toddler wrap is actually getting a little tight on the legs!! He is so chunky. I know he’ll slim down in the thigh once he’s crawling though. We have had to put all our lovely size large Fuzzis aside!!! I can’t BELIEVE he has outgrown these – it’s crazy. He still fits the waist on the smallest or second smallest snap setting, but they are a bit tight on the thigh and he keeps getting a builder’s bum at the back! So I presume he has outgrown them in the rise. I am tentatively on the look-out for XL Fuzzi Bunz, but we’re having a minor money crisis so I’m not actively hunting right now. We need a couple more Grobags though. He does great in his Grobags at night, but it’s getting too hot for his summer ones. He needs a couple of high summer ones I think. But we’ll see.

I’ll leave you with this last photo of Arthur, taken yesterday. He was lying on the bed, and I was taking photos of him, and I popped up behind the camera and said, “BOO!” (which he always loves!) and he laughed and giggled at me! Here is the photo I took of him doing that! :)

He’s so lovely. I do love him sooooo much. I wish I could fix his sleep for him better. And not be so grumpy. And love him even better than I do. But I do love him so. I sing him love songs. Really! I sing songs that I know the tunes to (like chart songs or church music) and change the words, making them up as I go along, to be all about Arthur and how much Mummy loves him :) Because I do. And I want him to always know it. My little love.