Love and weakness...

So, the strategy... Easier said than bloody well done. That's my verdict!

The night started smoothly. I fed him and left him to self-settle, which he did without a sound. Amazing!! But when he woke at 10:30 for a feed — he was 'asleep', but crying, and seemed hungry — he was impossible to get back down. He screamed and screamed. Phil did his very best. But how do you go on when your baby is crying so forcefully and with such desperation that there are pools of tears in the crevices of his little ears? I couldn't do it. We couldn't do it.

I did manage to hold off with the feeds though. He's not having any milk between 10 and 5. That part seems to be working, and he IS waking less frequently. But he's still in with us, which I honestly do not mind one little bit. I just love his sleepy face, his milky breath on me all night, his body folded up against mine. It's heaven.

I am working on getting him to self-settle during the day, it's a battle. It's so frustrating! To think he could do this with hardly any fuss, only a month ago. Yesterday I had PMS, and was feeling oh-so-irritable... It really broke me. It's the control thing again. I canNOT control him. I can guide him, I can try to teach him, but he's an individual person, a very separate entity with his own ideas, his own plan.

I have decided to stop beating myself up about all this. Sleep is threatening to take over my life — not the act itself, but the the thinking about it, the planning and plotting and strategising. It's crazy! Who really cares?

I feel such immense love for him that I cannot bear to see him sad, the sound of his screams just pains me, it kills me. I keep telling myself to be strong, to be tough, but when it comes to my Otis I am the weakest of the weak.

A new sleep strategy

After a week of excessively disrupted sleep, courtesy of my little, restless angel, I bundled him up in the pram and walked up to the Oatley ECHC yesterday. I gave the nurse a history of his sleep patterns, and the various tactics we've employed with mixed success. She was lovely — non-judgmental regarding the co-sleeping, direct and specific. This Friday night, I am NOT feeding him AT ALL overnight. I may give him one final feed at around 10, but I'll then pop him back in his cot, and Phil will re-settle him in the cot as many times as is required, until around 4 or so when I'll bring him in for the morning. No milk! He'll freak! But, as the nurse said, he's only feeding overnight because he knows no other way of calming and comforting himself.

When we re-settle him, we are NOT to pick him up or stay in there for more than a minute. We can let him cry for up to 5 minutes at a time, no longer. I can do that. I think...

I am petrified! But we have pre-emptive plans in place... I am going to give him a extra meal during the day, I am going to offer the breast every 90 minutes or so, all day long. I am going to stock up on Coke and DVDs to keep us awake, occupied and entertained. Phil is to do the settling so as to break the wake=feed association. The poor man will be so tired the next day, as he isn't used to having the erratic sleep that I am so accustomed to.

Stay tuned! I am hoping for results within days.

The Time Traveler's Wife

This excerpt is such a wonderful, real account of how it feels to long for a baby. I remember feeling just like this, it was a feeling that ate me up, that enveloped me. Nothing else mattered apart from conceiving that baby, my baby, the baby who ended up being Otis. Perhaps there are other, better, passages about this same thing, but this is the one I noticed, the one that spoke to me in my post-longing, post-conception, post-pregnancy, post-baby life:

"I was simply not thinking about a lot of important stuff because I was completely drunk with the notion of having a baby: a baby that looked sort of like Henry, black hair and those intense eyes and maybe very pale like me and smelled like milk and talcum powder and skin, a sort of dumpling baby, gurgling and laughing at everyday stuff, a monkey baby, a small cooing sort of baby. I would dream about babies...

I suddenly began to see babies everywhere; a sneezing red-haired girl in a sunbonnet at the A&P, a tiny staring Chinese boy, son of the owners in the Golden Wok (home of wonderful vegetarian egg rolls); a sleeping, almost bald baby at a Batman movie. In a fitting room at JCPenney a very trusting woman actually let me hold her three-month old daughter; it was all I could do to continue sitting in that pink-beige vinyl chair and not spring up and run madly away hugging that tiny soft being to my breasts.

My body wanted a baby. I felt empty and I wanted to be full. I wanted someone to love who would stay: stay and be there, always. And I wanted Henry to be in this child, so that when he was gone he wouldn't be entirely gone..."

"Baba!"

My boy's first word.

Happy, restless, sick little man...

He's a happy, smiley little bundle, but very snotty, and has been for a couple of weeks now. His night sleeping has reverted to that of a newborn, and I am doing the very thing I was always so determined NOT to do — I am feeding him to sleep. Day and night. We've just had such a rough time of it, I am doing what works, even though I know it is probably establishing problematic habits. I'll fix it all — yeah, like it's that easy! — once his nose stops leaking like a tap. I think he may have inherited the Lyons family allergies. There has been so much dust around, not only throughout the move, but at Mum's due to the installation of her new kitchen.

Anyway, it's not all bad... He is sleeping for at least a hour at a time during the day. We have foregone the first morning sleep, so he is now awake between 6:30 and 10:30.

He is eating really, really well, which makes me happy. He had fish for the first time this week, and really enjoyed it! He gags less on lumpy foods, and I worry less when I give him a finger of toast. Doing very well with a cup, and quite keen to feed himself with a spoon, but I'm not permitting that just yet. The one thing that hasn't agreed with him, for whatever reason, was Heinz Chocolate Custard! It will be very odd if the baby Phil and I created has a chocolate aversion.

His two little teeth, still just stumps really, give his wide-faced smile a bit of extra character. He has his own toothbrush now, and he loves it when I brush his teeth! He goes all still as if to concentrate on the sensation.

His current favourite bath toy is an empty mineral water bottle... He could play with that for hours. Honestly, babies don't need toys! Just give them rubbish to play with.

He's a little more clingy to me lately, which is lovely in a way — it's always nice to feel needed and wanted, of course — but also tiring, and not something I wish to encourage.

Swimming lessons begin on Saturday!! He and Phil are going together, it will be their "thing", but I am along for the ride this weekend, as photographer/observer.

At nearly 7 months...

Otis:

— eats three solid meals a day, usually cereal and fruit at breakfast, avocado or yoghurt at lunch, and vegies with cheese or meat at dinner
— continues to breastfeed at night, sometimes all night long!!
— sits for lengthy periods, but still tips over now and then
— says "babababa" quite clearly
— shakes with joy at the sight of a leafy tree or Mama drinking from a water bottle (he loves to share)
— plays peek-a-boo with a towel or sheet
— is quite handy with a rattle
— rolls around as a mode of transportation... no sign of crawling just yet!
— has two teeth, which arrived fairly painlessly
— weighs nearly 9 kilograms...

Bad Mama!

Oti and I just popped down to the shops, and on the way one of his socks fell off... It is freezing cold and blustery, and I was getting glares left, right and centre.

Whilst old women with trolleys, boisterous butchers and other, smug, mothers managed to make me feel like a terrible person because my son's sock fell off — the other one was still there, evidence, surely, that I did actually put a pair of socks on him — Otis just smiled and cooed and kicked and laughed, not a care in the world... Babies are much tougher than we give them credit for!

A bit sad about the sock though, as it was a favourite... A lovely, electric blue shade, and Bonds to boot.

In other news... My boy has teeth! One is about millimetre long thus far, the other just peeing through the broken skin of his yummy, pink, sloppy gums. He's been somewhat out of sorts lately, I am guessing this is why. He's also still quite snotty. He's sitting well, rolling this way and that in a rather compulsive fashion, and charming the pants off everyone he meets. Yesterday we did the big walk over to Grandma Peggy's at Connells Point, she just loved spending a couple of hours in his company.

7 months next week! What a learning curve these 7 months have been... Next time I'll ban all books, dismiss all advice, and do what feels right and instinctive... I spent too much time worrying that I was doing the "wrong" thing, and too little living in the moment...

I got my period!

I feel really strange... I haven't had a period since 3 April last year, so it's been awhile. It's nice to know that it's all still working properly down there — it is a nice reminder of my fertility, of the fact that I'll have another little Otis at some point in the future. It also makes me sad... Sad that that whole "period" of my life is over. It is a period in more ways than one — a full stop signalling the end of the amazing journey that is conception, pregnancy and birth. My baby is no longer fully reliant on me for sustenance — he has fewer breast feeds now, and can be nourished by others.

Getting a period is also an absolute pain in the ass — I haven't had to bother with tampons for almost 18 months!