Dancing Queen….

Today I thought I’d give dancing a go with Amelia. Not dancing as you are imagining it, but just sat on my lap, singing and moving her body and arms around. She absolutely loved it and the best bit was the giggles. Finally, I made my little Princess laugh! James has been able to do it for a couple of weeks now but every time I play with her, she smiles and coooo’s but never laughs until today.

I think each and every development milestone she makes is such an achievement and makes me feel so proud. I even cried today when she started the giggles as I couldn’t believe that just 11 weeks ago I was giving birth to this tiny baby girl, so new to the world.

I also have to tell you about the amount of time she spends chattering, she must take after her Mummy because she is ALWAYS chattering! Bless her. Could be worse, she could have the size of my mouth too….

Seriously though, I sit here and think about how much she’s changing and growing and the sheer speed she is learning too, its just absolutely mind blowing. I couldn’t be more proud.

“Is she good”…..

Just what to people expect you to say when they ask you this question?  Yesterday Amelia and I went to the post office and unfortunately for me, Amelia decided that she’d like her bottle half an hour early.  Great, thanks for that, fabulous timing.  So, in true baby form, she screamed the whole of tescos down.  Just as I was trying to shhhh and pat her to calm her for just a few minutes until I could escape the shop and find somewhere to sit down and give her a feed – I hear a voice behind me… “ohhh isn’t she a good baby?” “Normally” I reply.  As soon as I get out and sit on the bench to feed her, another old woman walks past with “Awww, is she good?” Well, she’s quiet because I’m feeding her and seeing as she was made to wait a few extra minutes in tescos and thought I wasn’t going to feed her, then yes, I suppose now she’s being quite good.  So I reply “Yes, she’s great”

So, what would they say if my actual reply was “actually no, she’s a really bad baby, do you want her?”.  Of course I couldnt do such a thing and Amelia is not a “bad” baby at all, but are they really interested in an honest answer or do they just want to hear you say yes?  I can’t figure it out.

I think a better question would be “how are you getting on?” or “how is she getting on?”.  I don’t think I’ve ever asked anybody if their baby is good or not, to me, its just such a bizarre question to ask.

So, all you people out there who ask new mums “is she good” think about it – do you really want the honest answer?!

8 weeks of breast feeding…

Breast feeding has been both the hardest and the most rewarding part of parenting so far for me.  When we finally got our latch right and I saw how I could settle and comfort Amelia straight away with something my body naturally produces and make her so contented is by far the most amazing feeling in the world.  However, reminding myself that feeding isn’t the only part of being a Mummy kept me grounded.

The problems started once I had mastitis in my left breast and Amelia refused to feed from me on that side.  At first I was quite angry at her.  I had gone through Hell to feed her, pain, worry, tears, more pain and oh funnily enough even MORE pain but she wasn’t having any of it.  She would cry, get frustrated, pull away, gag on my boob and just get herself so worked up, I wondered why I was doing it in the first place.  Then I remembered why I wanted to feed her in the first place – to make her happy, contented and satisfied.  If now, she had decided that breast feeding wasn’t making her happy, contented and satisfied then who was I to make her?  I read so many stories of women who go into meltdown when their babies go on a “nursing strike” and do everything in their power to get them back on the breast and I think to myself, who are they doing it for? The baby? or themselves? That’s what I had to think to myself.  If I started to do everything in my power to get Amelia back on the breast who was I doing it for? her? or me? I unfortunately discovered it wasn’t all for her.

Over the course of the next week or so, I attempted to get Amelia to feed from the right side before offering her a bottle.  Some times she’d take it for a few minutes, sometimes she’d scream and gag and point blank refuse to feed and I didn’t force her.  I wanted to feed her for as long as she or I felt happy to do so and much to my disappointment I found Amelia making her feelings known – she wanted a bottle.  Now, some people may say that this was my own fault for mix feeding her in the first place but when you have a midwife telling you that you are “starving your baby” and after a trip to A&E on day 4, I had no choice but to give her formula to save her from dehydration when she refused to latch.  She has since thrived and is now a very happy baby.

I think of my 8 weeks of breast feeding my daughter with bitter sweet memories.  I believe I stopped before I was ready to “give up” but, I am also proud of getting over so many obstacles I had in my way.  All I ever and will ever want is to make my daughter happy and although it upsets me to think our breast feeding days are over, I know she’s doing well and that is the main thing.

8 week update….

Amelia is 8 weeks old now.  Where has the time gone? I just thought seeing as I have quite a few things to write about, I would group them all together in a little “update” rather than make several posts and then probably forget half of what I wanted to write about anyway.

So, lets start with feeding.  2 weeks ago during the 6 week growth spurt, my darling daughter and I caught mastitis.  It was awful, itchy boobs, sore, red, lumpy. painful, oh my gosh, so incredibly painful.  I was told to “feed through it” – and the worst thing was, people said it like it was easy.  It was the hardest thing I have ever gone through since her birth.  She cried, I cried and I felt like we were back to square one with painful feeds.  I did feed through it for a few days, not every feed, but as many as I felt I could and as many as Amelia would take.  When we got to 7 weeks Amelia started to change with regards to her feeding.  She was all of a sudden a girl with her own mind and not somebody who was going to do anything she didn't want to do.  So, we began a nursing strike.  She would breast feed when and if it suited her and if she didn't want it – she’d let me know.  I was disappointed at first, read loads of websites to entice her back to breast, cried to James, felt like I’d failed her as a Mother, blah blah blah and then it hit me – how selfish was I to force my daughter to breast feed if she was telling me she didn’t want to do it anymore or not as much? The bottle is easier, she doesn’t have to work hard for it, its still nice and warm and she still gets lots of cuddles whilst feeding, so which would you choose? The easier option I’m sure – well, this is what she was choosing too and at the end of the day, who am I to force her to breast feed just so I can say “I breastfed for X amount of weeks” I also think it made it easier for me.  I wanted to stop several times when we were going through growth spurts or bad phases but Amelia has made that decision for me, for us both and I am more than happy for her to lead me to what she wants.  She still roots for me at bedtime and in the morning when she’s a bit dozy I offer her breast too but she pulls off when she’s had enough and cries for a bottle and that’s fine by me.  I am still expressing a little each day, to top up her bottles, but my supply is decreasing rapidly so I know I wont be able to do it much longer.  Still, she’s happy, that’s all that matters.

So, moving on from feeding, lets move to sleeping shall we? Until this week – I would have told you how great my little girl was at sleeping but last night the little monster was awake from her 8pm feed till about 10.30pm! She is normally asleep well within an hour after a feed!  Once she settled down, she slept till 4.30am though, so it wasn’t too bad.  She normally goes down between 8pm and 9pm and sleeps till 3 – 4am and then wakes again around 7am but then will go back to sleep till 10am.  As soon as we can get rid of that 3am feed, I shall be a very happy Mummy!

The next subject I wanted to just write a bit about is separation anxiety.  I think the only time Amelia has been away from me was when she was just a week old and James went for a walk in the sling with her whilst I slept and I was just too tired to refuse.  Yesterday, Ian and Helen (the in laws) asked if they could take Amelia for a couple of hours to meet Helen’s Mum, Francis who is 100 years old and had been so eager to meet her since her birth.  I felt a bit anxious, a bit scared about her being away from me, what they would do if she cried etc, but they took her, James went to Asda, I had a little cry on my own and they were back within 2 hours, with smiles as big as their faces!  They said she was a great little girl, smiled and cooo’ed and had loads of fun and then fell asleep when it was time to leave.  I am so glad she was so good to them.  I now feel much more at ease at leaving her with them again.  James has took Amelia out tonight to a radio club meeting and although again I feel nervous, I know the more I let her go, the better we’ll both be at being separated which is a good thing for her and a good thing for me too.