I was going to write a long -overdue update, but I can’t stop thinking about what Mary Ellen is going through. And that’s far more important than anything I could have said.

the plan…

What is this? A whole baby sleep cycle, 45 minutes alone in the cot, without waking? Where is the BB I know and love tonight?

Eek. The last two nights with our new pissy little gentle no co-sleeping regime have been harsh. OMG. (Yes, it warrants MSN language.)

BB has been waking Every! Ten! Minutes!

Serious torture. To the point where I actually had to call my mother to come and take him off my hands for a few hours yesterday, just to get some sleep. Now I get why this baby sleeping caper is so hard for most people. My extreme napability has shielded me fairly well thus far, but this is intense.

One hour! It’s a miracle! We are winning small battles. He is not going ballistic as soon as I put him horizontal in my arms, which is good. He has started actually allowing me to put him down in his cot to sleep for short stretches. Short, short stretches. I am hopeful this will work ultimately, despite the current sleep dep.

So here is what we’re doing. For the record. And for Brandy.

Playing super-longplay hippy music CD with babbling brook and birdsong and tinkly piano on an hour-long loop.
Weaning him onto wrapping his arms around a soft toy instead of my neck.
Creating more routine sleep times during the day and at night.
Developing a structured bedtime routine - bath, story, bottle, cuddle. (No, we didn’t have one before. We suck.)
Using key phrase to calm him to sleep: Shh… time for sleeping…
Holding him for increasingly shorter periods to settle him before putting him in the cot.

Supposedly, all of this will change his sleep cues and he will be better able to settle himself without having to reach over and grab my hair constantly.

In fact, just after I wrote that he woke up (1 hr 15 minutes - not bad) and he only took a moment to settle. Better still was the urgency with which he grabbed the fluffy tail of his toy lion and curled his arm over it, so the mummy-substitute part of it all does appear to be working.

We’re yet to see whether the sleep part of it works. Hopefully it will be soon. Hopefully within seven days, when I have to be back at work.

Boo.

Well, lets see if BB will give me a chunk of time long enough to actully write something, instead of just knock two feeds off my blogroll.

Things here haven’t been too bad.

Well, he’s still sleeping like a piece of steaming shit, of course, but my step-kids have gone home, and me and the T-meister have been actually getting along - two things not necessarily related to each other, but then again, maybe they are.

Anyway, it’s good. Due to having a routine (again?), we have, at least, a baby who will go to sleep at an appropriate time, even if he won’t stay asleep.

It’s something though. And our copy of “The No-Cry Sleep Solution” arrived yesterday, so I am hoping the dirty t-shirt in the cot / hippy music / soft toy attachment will start doing something useful in time.

Dare I hope.

Meanwhile, countdown to return-to-work has now reached nine days. God. I try to be positive - it is mostly a new role, it is only three days, I have been getting a bit bored anyway etc etc etc but still, the thought of having to go in there periodically revolts me, especially the thought that since I’m job-sharing I won’t even get my own desk to litter with photographs and make everyone puke. Wah.

Finally, an admission. That I could never make on my original blog due to the utter shame.

The last couple of weeks I have been struggling with smoking again.

I know. What an absolute idiot. I can’t believe my own stupidness. It started as one on New Years, then was soon one a day, but is slowly building up. I have to get a grip on it. I have to. I don’t want to be like I was before I quit, which was just about the most hardened smoker you could ever meet, like I’m talking fifty or sixty a day during some points in my life. Literally, a chain-smoker.

I hate the feeling of slavery to it; that bit has come back so quickly, regardless of how much or little I smoke. It was so good to just not have to deal with the cravings anymore. I know that stopping again entirely is the only way to get over the cravings ultimately. That the only thing causing the cravings is the fact that I keep having more cigarettes. I know all of it. Which is why I’m so very disgusted with myself.

Anyway, bleugh. Feel free to chastise and/or give assvice.

About the breastfeeding…

…I think it might be over.

The last few days, Buddha Baby has been refusing the breast entirely. It’s not like the other times he did the refusal thing, where he would cry and be frustrated and arch his back, and it was as if he was interested, but he couldn’t get what he wanted. Traumatic for all, in other words.

 Now it’s as if he’s just not interested; he nuzzles his head into my breast, but he just will not suck. I even tried dragging out the nipple shield and SNS, but that only served to make him angry about being tricked into sucking once he realised the silicon wasn’t a bottle or his dummy.

It could be the top teeth which are in the process of coming down; it could be the mouth thrush he’s had recently. It could be my less-than-calm reaction to the biting he’s been doing lately.

But I don’t know.

Kellymom says babies rarely wean before they are a year old. Unfortunately, I’ve learned that what Kellymom says is not always true.

So we’ll keep pumping, I guess, and hope he comes back.

But I’m not counting on it. Buddha Baby knows what he wants and doesn’t want these days.

Lately I have been thinking about the last of the sperm, out there on Bridge Rd, in the freezer.

But it makes me feel slightly sick in the stomach, so then I put the thought away again.

2:13am. Can’t sleep.

I hope everyone had a lovely New Years. Mine was a bit sucky. Not all of it - mostly the bit where the kids decided one hour before leaving that they didn’t want to go to my sister’s place for dinner after all and T. was supporting them and I had to have a massive tanty and basically force all three into the car.

(Well, T. is in receipt of yet another man-cold  –you so have to click off and see this; it’s hilarious – so I can’t entirely blame him. But I can blame him for refusing to take any cold and flu tablets for it.)

So blah. Then we got to my sister’s and they were virtually audibly sulking and I was all worked up and I had to walk around the block with my sister to cool off and then I was naughty and had a cigarette because I was so angry. And then everything looked hideously bleak and we came back and everyone there felt awkward for a while.

The night improved after that, luckily. I have not yet served divorce papers nor murdered my step-children in a surge of angry bloodlust.

And there you go, baby stirring now. Have to go before it reaches full capacity and it takes too long to get him back down. Press publish.

Goodnight.

feeling a tad maudlin today…

Dear Buddha Baby,

A couple of days ago, you turned ten months. Today is not a milestone day. It’s the day before the day before the end of the year you were born. Nothing more.

But today, something feels different; I feel like I have seen the end of your infancy.

It wasn’t anything spectacular. You have started crawling, babbling, pulling up to a stand. You have two teeth. All wonderful, all familiar.

It wasn’t these things.

But in the glimpse of your long body in my arms in the full-length mirror, in the sleepy suck of what I feel you really do want to be one of your last breastfeeds, in the way you work so hard, so independently, to tap your spoon in the bowl of mashed pasta, I felt your babyhood slip away from me.

And it’s sad, though it’s as it should be; the natural order. It’s the end of something. You will never need me like this again. Every day, every moment, you move further into your own life. And it’s a long way away — but it’s there, off in One Day.

Sometimes it feels as if the reason we have children is to give them away to the world.

Protected: Continued: feeling a tad maudlin today… (image)

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

post of many updates

Oh how I wish I could muster the energy for a real post. Have been chipping away at one about step-parenthood but it involves mucho thinking and a brain I currently, in the 35 degree heat, do not have.

In lieu:

Buddha Baby has gotten bored of crawling and decided that pulling up to a stand is way more fun. He appears now to be crawling only for the purpose of reaching the nearest level surface. 3am practise commenced promptly.

He started the real pre-talking babbles exactly yesterday, while I was in the car on the way to my (27 weeks pregnant) sister’s place. I managed to escape a car accident while I sat in the driver’s seat watching him silently attempt oral contortions in the rear vision mirror until he felt confident enough to push some voice into them. Not mamama or dadada here though. Only wawawa or yayaya so far.

The First Christmas was uneventful, with Buddha Baby being incredibly spoilt and receiving presents even from Uncle D. who never even gave me a present in his whole life, so that was something special. Step-children sat in boredom and uncomfortableness (a word??) at my parents’ dinner table like they do every year.

Am still breastfeeding. A few hiccups, now resolved(ish). Will be happy to elaborate should one of you have any interest whatsofuckingever in hearing about it.

Countdown to Return-To-Work is beginning. I think there’s about four weeks to go. Am trying not to think about; too depressing right now. It’s only three days a week and my timetable is all library except for one year seven English class - it’s a nice, pissy load really. We are managing to avoid child care with a bit of a shuffle of T’s hours, but I’m still doubtful of Buddha Baby’s ability to deal with my absence, given his recent behaviours. We shall see.

Have been lazy with gym. Bad, bad, bad. Will start being good, good, good very soon.

Girl in my writer’s group had a story published in “Best Australian Short Stories” - a huge thing. Onset of yet another reign of guilt and regret about being lazy about sending off my poems. Why do I rarely do it? Why? Why? Why? I’m not scared of rejection, truly; I just hate going to the post office.

Have reshuffled furniture to accomodate the now-established co-sleeping. Buddha Baby gets to be against the wall while T. is on the other side of me, pretending the baby isn’t really in our bed. This works for everyone. Kind of. Well, no one has ended up in tears about it, anyway. Except Buddha Baby, who has decided he will only sleep belly-to-belly with me with his arms around my neck, holding onto my hair. Oh and I need to have my pyjama top off so the all-night milk bar is easily accessable, as well. I’m not sure how this is all going to pan out, of course. I’m decision-making on instinct here, which is possibly not so reliable right now. But is an interesting experiment.

And that, my friends, is all.

Protected: Some photos. Strike two.

This post is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password: