A post I am writing in November

Oh, gets easier, gets harder again, gets infinitely more rewarding, gets infinitely more draining...
I would really like to get back into writing this blog because it feels like the sort of record that I want to have, but to do this reliably I'd need to have more evenings where I'm capable of something other than staring blankly at the floor recovering.
Briefly:
- My beloved sausage baby is approaching six months, is still the plumpest baby on the block, and has the most beautiful smile that anyone has ever had.
- He is also what I believe Dr Sears would call a "high needs baby". A really intense involvement in the world demands a high level of input from mummy when you still can't quite support yourself sitting up or reach any of the things you want or stop thinking for long enough to sleep. He has no middle gears, and I adore him for this but it's TIRING.
- Newsflash: new mother finds having a baby tiring.
- I probably don't even count as a new mother any more.
- I have been reading a little, honest, but the reason my last post has only just made it up is that it was all written in draft and somebody closed the tab without saving it so it lost the second half which was a book update, and now I can't guarantee the list would be complete, and I don't know what to do about that.
- I've changed. I don't know what I've changed to, and whether it's all for the good, but I'm definitely not the same person I was pre-bonzo.

So I have some targets that I can start pursuing as soon as he tips over six months. Definitely not in order of importance:
1. Get back into writing the blog more regularly, including updating what I've been reading, which might even encourage me to read a bit more again;
2. Work out what I'm going to do about him and work. It's clear to me that I can't possibly go back at the end of January as I'd planned, but the most I could get from my current job is up to the end of April. Maybe I could go back there part time, but I need to do some serious soul searching about this. Working 3 days a week would perhaps, at a stretch, just about pay the bills, but I don't want someone else to have my baby 3 days a week. I know he'll be a lot older then, so I need to start thinking about future-Isaac not current-Isaac, but he'll still not be big enough to tell me if he doesn't like it, or to understand why I keep leaving him. But, we need to get some income from somewhere, and if I plan ever to go back to work then I probably need not to stop completely now (I could get rusty quite fast), and there is just the tiniest bit of me that thinks a bit of adult company occasionally would be quite nice;
3. Get thin and beautiful like all the other mummies. Ha!
4. Start a super healthy eating programme so that as our baby led weaning progresses he is only eating the purest and best food, but also very economically.
5. Flap wings. Fly to moon.
6. Make sure I have my sense of perspective right. I don't know if I'm spending too much time thinking/worrying about the baby; I don't know if I'm becoming a boring person about him; I don't even know whether it's good for him to have me so attached. And I have no idea how to find out.
7. Keep up with the OU stuff so that I get my degree finished in the summer. Easy...

A post I wrote in September that never made it up

Take a deep breath, and whisper it.....I think it's getting easier. I read in a few places that at 3 months a switch just flicks, and I think it has. Suddenly he goes to sleep for the night at somewhere between 7pm and 9pm, and although he is waking up all the time for feeds, he goes straight back to sleep. So I have evenings again, and even more spectacularly I've learned that the best way to get him to sleep in the mornings is to pop him in the pram and go to the park. There, it seems necessary to imitate something of the morning routine of my other life, my long-distant, seems-like-a-hazy-memory life, and get out the coffee and book. Bliss!!

What's most relieving and rewarding for me is that it's not really about the physical improvements, the fact that we're getting there with the breastfeeding, and that his sleeping is getting more predictable. It's that I'm adjusting to the whole thing emotionally and developing both flexibility and resilience in quantities I didn't know I had. On the way to the park on Monday morning, a jogger passed me, and I had a moment of envy. But so, so quickly I found myself thinking well, I have the remnants of a mummy tummy unlike her lovely flat one, my hair has been finger-brushed only unlike her sleek lovely ponytail, I am wearing jeans which I think are now held together by various baby fluids, but I really, honestly, don't care, and wouldn't swap it. My new kind of freedom is about spending time with my baby; my new exercise is lumping him around; I've found a way to get in a window of time for reading on a bench - and I wouldn't swap any of this for being younger and thinner and less surrounded by obligations. Of course I do plan to be gorgeous one day, but given the choice now between a pound off me and a pound on my baby, there's no competition at all.

Dealing with a surplus

Carrying on with posting relevant to world breastfeeding week (and I promise I'll be back to books and knitting shortly) I'm delighted just to have signed up to donate spare breastmilk through http://www.ukamb.org/donor.html
Despite all the troubles we've had with feeding so far, I've always seemed to be blessed with plenty of milk, and with the sausage's latest feeding frenzy my body seems to have shouted "WOO-HOO! TWINS!!" and ramped up production even further.
I could work on a freezer stash, and I will definitely be doing this a little, but once I read that 1floz of milk will feed a preemie for a day and a half, I just couldn't see a reason not to. I'm just so lucky to have a thriving, happy, even fat, baby and can't even begin to imagine what it's like to have one stuck in a box with tubes, come too early for you to be able to feed it yourself. The thought breaks my heart, and while I know that determination can do a lot (which is how I'm still feeding the sausage), for mothers in these circumstances who just can't provide their own milk, I am warmed inside by the idea that a bit of trouble and admin for me will make such a difference to them and their brand new babies.
And I suppose it makes up for the fact I can't donate blood at the moment, and am not feeling able to give money to charity - here I'm just giving of what I have, and that feels great.

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I’m celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!

You can, too — link up your breastfeeding posts from August 1-7 in the linky below, and enjoy reading, commenting on, and sharing the posts collected here and on Natural Parents Network.

(Visit NPN for the code to place on your blog.)

The post I would like to write...

...and which, at some point, I definitely will be writing, will be the one called "my breastfeeding journey". It will document how flippin hard breastfeeding is, our initial early struggles with jaundice, the whole tongue tie saga, the ridiculousness of being trapped only able to do the rugby hold on one side (which, if you're not all over this, means you need a big stack of cushions and therefore really can't pull it off discreetly in starbucks), the traumas and self-doubt of evening cluster feeding, and then a line or two at the end that says "...but now, after nn weeks, we're still nursing and both loving it".
If you're a caring concerned reader of this blog, please can you send my way any positive vibes you have available to make that "nn" above be around, I don't know, 9-10 weeks? I am still gracelessly, wilfully, painfully determined that my perfect, gorgeous, thriving, worth-more-than-gold sausage is going to get the best food for him for at least six months, but I can't say I'm loving it yet: I'm loving the effects, and I'm loving the fact we're managing it, but the process? The process still hurts, still makes me question my adequacy and my resources and reserves, and I'm still working at going with the flow on how much it immobilises me, and I do wish it was easier.
(Of course, I'd been planning to write this post for a couple of days, and the reason that, exceptionally, I have time to do so this evening is that he had a really really good long feed oo, a couple of hours ago, and has been absolutely fast asleep ever since. So, hardly a long traumatic evening of cluster feeding, and what's more, the really good long feed, on both sides, didn't even hurt. One of the wisest pieces of advice I had from one of the squillion experts I've talked to on this, though, was to take it one feed at a time. She said it was a mistake to think "right, we've now cracked this" just as it was to think "this proves it's terrible", and that in fact it was likely to get better gradually. This and "never give up on a bad day" are keeping me going).
(Included in the "my breastfeeding journey" post will be discussions of two more books, 36 The womanly art of breastfeeding (La Leche League) and 37 Ina May's guide to breastfeeding. You can never accuse me of not reading up around a subject - I might even also tell you all about 38 Understanding your crying baby (Kitzinger) which is a laughable reading choice for mother of possibly the sunniest baby that's ever been made)

***

I’m celebrating World Breastfeeding Week with Natural Parents Network!

You can, too — link up your breastfeeding posts from August 1-7 in the linky below, and enjoy reading, commenting on, and sharing the posts collected here and on Natural Parents Network.

(Visit NPN for the code to place on your blog.)

Reflections

My sausage baby is 5 weeks old today and occasionally I find a moment to think about the whole thing.

For anyone interested, the birth was a fantastic experience. I think that all the preparation I'd done mentally with reading the Ina May book, listening to the natal hypnotherapy cd, etc, really paid off in the sense that I was expecting it to go well and was sure it could - as well as being absolutely confident that my body could do it. (Disclaimer: I know that for plenty of people things go horribly wrong, and I'm not saying that this is their fault for not having prepared enough. It's just that I'd got myself into a good position so that because there were no complications, I could take advantage of this and have a great time of it).
Of course, there was a point some 24 hours after contractions started when my nerve wobbled a bit and I was seeking out the opiates - but fortunately I'd written quite a categorical birth plan saying I'd much prefer not to have drugs, and a shift change at the crucial moment meant that supermidwife arrived and provided me with a bit of tough love. We talked about drugs, I asked her "would diamorphine stop it hurting?" and she asked if I wanted the good news or the bad news. The good news, I said, and she said yes, it will stop it hurting; the bad news is that this stopping hurting will only happen once the baby's out.
Anyway, she persuaded me to use gas and air properly, and my beloved acted as a flawless coach, watching the monitor for my contractions, providing drinks and cooling spray, and putting up with my squiffiness - and finally, after some far-too-long period but only half an hour of pushing, Isaac came out at 2.30 on the Sunday morning.
I don't think any experience will ever rival being handed my new baby between my legs - writing this now, I still dissolve at the thought of it. It has to be the biggest thing you can do, and I did it! Afterwards supermidwife told me that he was the wrong way round, what they call "back to back" meaning that his head, instead of facing my back and therefore tucking down nicely to make a small cross section, was facing the other way up and presented a much larger obstacle. Back to back labours are notoriously slow in the latent phase, and painful, and "usually" (according to my GP's website) result in assisted delivery or a caesarian. So it was pretty miraculous that he came out naturally, with no drugs, and no damage to me.
I'll be writing a lot more about the wonders of life with a new baby, including lots of analysis of attachment parenting, raving about how my Moby wrap is the best invention ever, gurgling about every single beautiful thing he does, and perhaps a bit of ranting about WHY DOES NO ONE WARN YOU HOW HARD BREASTFEEDING IS?? but of course, it's now fitting around his slightly capricious sleep/wake times so please forgive any erraticness (and made-up words).
Briefly, books I'd read before and just not written down, or ones I've started since,
30 The Betrayal (Helen Dunmore)
31 Whatever you love (Louise Doughty)
32 Attachment parenting (William Sears)
33 Last night in twisted river (John Irving) (still in progress)
34 Big House (Nicole Krauss) (still in progress)
35 The underachieving school (John Holt) (still in progress).

Yes, yes, yes. I have three books on there "in progress", two of which I started before the sausage was born. And Anna Karenina, which I think I've already given a number to, only I've so nearly finished that.
And yes, I've not said anything about them, just listed them, and that's wimping out. But understand, if you will, that this is a grasping at a strand of me that's getting a little squeezed at the moment, and that while there is nothing I'd rather be doing than attending to my baby, nothing's going to stop me reading, even if it does slow me down mightily.

Been a bit busy

Look what I made!!

So, I'll be doing my best to get back up to speed on the reading front, particularly as I'd only just begun my Orange prize shortlist challenge when this happened - but for now, bear with me.

Is it wrong to wish I was Marilynne Robinson?

The day before yesterday I read 29 Housekeeping, which was her first novel (you may recall my raving about Home and Gilead last year) and it actually induced in me a semi-drugged state of bliss and peace. How can anyone possibly write so accurately about everything, and in such a way that absolutely exactly you know what she means and you're right there with her?

I could just write out the whole book (and wish I had) but to give you a tiny sample, the narrator talking about her older sister's dislike for "fanciful" clothes and accessories:

"She was of the common persuasion. Time that had not come yet - an anomaly in itself - had the fiercest reality for her. It was a hard wind in her face; if she had made the world, every tree would be bent, every stone weathered, every bough stripped by that steady and contrary wind. Lucille saw in everything its potential for invidious change. She wanted worsted mittens, brown oxfords, red rubber boots. Ruffles wilted, sequins fell, satin was impossible to clean."
That's nearly half way through the book and you can tell already no good is going to happen.

As for my gestation project, I'll meekly take advice about reading. I've reason to believe the goblin's planning to inviegle his way to an early entrance one way or another, so am going for not being too ambitious (though finishing AK and   swimming through a whole Irving might keep me quiet for a while).