Holidays!

Is it really a week since I posted, I knew it wasn't yesterday but I didn't think it was that long!

Oh well, I am excited, for it is only 4 sleeps (if Naomi sleeps through, which she is currently doing every second night!!) till we go on holiday!  We will be taking the long drive to the frozen North to visit our families in and around Aberdeen.

Travelling with a small child has it share of stresses and complicating factors though!  There is, of course, the sheer amount of "stuff" they need.  I went through all the stuff we took last time and started trying to think of things we could take out so that we could avoid taking the roof box (I can't think what those things do to your fuel economy but I would really rather not do the 800 mile round trip with that attached to the top of my already quite brick-like family car!).  At one point I started telling my husband we could manage with only two dummies rather than six, he quite rightly pointed out that although this was true, it was unlikely to make much difference to the overall capacity of our car!  I likened the process to editing an essay at university, where what you needed to do was take out a whole paragraph, but being unable to decide which one, you would instead go through taking out some "the"s and maybe hyphenating a few words here and there.  In the end I am not sure I downsized the equipment at all, though I did promise to pack less outfits and sleep attire for the child! (Though I also swapped the bouncy chair we took last time for a bumbo, that definitely takes up more space!).  I fear that in a few days, when push comes to shove (quite literally) we will just admit defeat and put the roofbox (or sail) on top of our already quite big car!

The next problem is one of distance.  It is clearly unreasonable to expect Naomi at 6 months old, to sit in her car seat for 8 hours like her Dad and I used to do before she was around (well, we didn't sit in her car seat, we wouldn't fit!) so you have to start thinking about how to break up the journey and you start thinking of various relatives you haven't spoken to in years and phoning them up to ask if you can stop in for a cup of coffee or even to stay the night so the child can chill out for a bit.  Last time we travelled Naomi was only on breastmilk, getting food into her that way didn't take all that long and wasn't all that messy, this time we will need to think about how and when and where we can shovel some mush into her every few hours too!

The car has another issue too, if Naomi starts to cry on the motorway (which is inevitible, she hates the car and we spend a lot of time on the motorway) there is nothing you can do, you can't pick her up, you can't shove my boob in her mouth (I wish I could find a way) and if you have bravely sat in the front you can't even get into the back to tell her it will all be okay.  I feel like motorways are places of stress for me, I am examining every sign to see how far it is to the next service station and then you have to decide whether to gamble on her making it to the next one or do you stop now, thus lengthening the journey even further!

I am very excited for my holiday, it will be great to see family and friends again, but please won't someone invent a teleportation device, I find myself dreading the thought of the drive!

The ongoing sleeping trauma

I have realised that since my husband went away (so far it has been 4 days) I have lost count of the number of times I have had to persuade Naomi to be asleep.

Be it for naps or for night time sleeping, my little girl doesn't want to do it!  I can spend easily 30-40 minutes getting her to go down for each nap and although night time tends to be a little easier she has taken to waking up. Often.

For the first several weeks of her life she was amazing sleeper, she even slept through for about 3 weeks when she was only about 10 weeks old.  We used to joke that we wouldn't know what to do if we had a "real" baby.  And that's the rub, we don't!

We go on holiday shortly and don't think it is fair on Naomi to change things before we go, and then obviously we won't change things on holiday and when we come back we want to give her a couple of weeks to settle back in, but then we have decided we will do some "sleep training".  I have mixed feelings about it but we can't keep going the way we are and as a result I am counting down the days!

I know it is a controversial subject but the bouncing/rocking/wearing out my knees/wearing out my back/having no energy left just has to go.  I cannot do it any more, this has been made all the more obvious to me while hubby is away, making my child sleep actually makes me want to break out into tears, and sometimes I do cry about it, so it is time for a change.

I just hope I can hold out that long, 6 weeks and counting!

Well that has been a terrible day

Today went badly.  It might be the worst day I can remember since I became a mummy.

We started with vomiting which meant that we had to cancel the coffee with another mummy friend and baby group, having just got her over a viral gastroenteritis I didn't feel it would be wise to start turning up to places with babies.  After the weekend we had last weekend, it also meant a trip to the doctor, mainly to put my mind at ease.

The day continued with a complete and utter disregard for napping, at 12 noon I made her nap by putting her in the sling, but this left me attached to her and meant I could do none of the things on my to-do list (one of which was drink water, though I forgot to do that rather than being quite that disabled) and meant I got very little rest even when I was sitting down.  She woke at about 1pm which meant that having woken at 8am and being only 5 months old she had already not napped enough.

Come 2.30 she was knackered again, so despite it not being that long I start the process of getting my very tired baby to nap, though apparently it is not as easy to do that as you might like.  I tried for 2 hours before I gave up, although in that 2 hours I shed many tears and got frustrated with everything.  In the morning she had been sick on her pram and because she hadn't napped in her cot in the morning I had been unable to "deal" with that, so I couldn't even fall back on my take-her-for-a-walk-in-the-pram back up napping technique.  I cried down the phone at my Mum, I texted my husband who was in meetings most of the afternoon, I complained on twitter then wished I hadn't for people didn't say *exactly* what I wanted them too (I don't know what I wanted them to say, mind you, and having reviewed the responses they were all completely appropriate!  I complained on facebook.  At times I put her down in her cot, came downstairs and cried as I listened to her cry through the monitor. At times I tried to comfort her with a cuddle or with her dummy.

In the end, my husband finished his meetings and phoned me, he was coming home (I love my husband's job, super-flexible doesn't even describe how flexible it is!), all I had to do was survive another 20 minutes and he would be here to help.

When he got home, everything got a little easier and everything certainly felt much easier.  What a shame that he leaves for Dublin on Monday where he will be working for 6 days :-(

Owning up to being mad!

So, this is the main point of this blog, mainly because it isn't a big part of me any more, but I thought I would share with you some of the challenges of being a Mum with a history of serious mental ill-health.

I used to be very unwell, I used to be psychotic, I used to be depressed to the point of so many suicide attempts that I lost count long before I stopped and I also used to have periods of mania.  I spent much of my early 20s in a psychiatric ward, sometimes the doors were locked and I wasn't always there at my own choice.  For a very long time the only thing that kept me well(ish) was having drugs jabbed into my bum once a fortnight.  Perhaps controversially, though, I don't mind you knowing this, it is part of who I was (and to an extent am) and I think that the fear of people who are not completely mentally well comes from people being scared to talk openly about their experiences.

I longed for Naomi (well a child) all that time, I was desperate, my husband and I even tried for a baby for a while.  I am so pleased, though, that God didn't let it happen at that time, for I could barely look after myself, let alone another little baby.  I am pleased that God's grace allowed Him to deny me my greatest desire.

I did get better though, I received treatment in a Therapeutic Community and my life turned around.  I love life now, I no longer tolerate it!  I love my friends and family and I love growing in being a Mum and a child of God!


I still find some things challenging though, I have always struggled to keep my mental health good unless I get enough sleep, and (particularly recently) Naomi has been keeping me up a lot and so I have to make sure I catch up when I can and that I do other things to keep me healthy.  I need to make sure I get enough exercise (a challenge in itself with a small baby) and I need to make sure I eat sensible food and don't ALWAYS just reach for the chocolate bar when the day has proved difficult!

My OCDish ways also need to be negotiated, I wear odd socks, I do this because wearing matching socks would stress me out unless they matched EXACTLY, even having had one go through the washing machine an extra time and so be a slightly different shade, really makes me anxious and so I have made it part of my personality to wear odd socks.  All this to say, I can't let that affect the way I deal with Naomi and not just in her dress style, but also that when she gets older and wants to colour the man in the picture in blue, I will just need to let her, it will however cause me no end of anxiety!  As will her putting her books back on the shelf but not in alphabetical order!

The thing I am working through at the moment, is that as the mother of a 5 month old baby who doesn't sleep through the night and struggles to go back to sleep without having my boob put in her mouth, it is completely normal to have down days! The adrenaline of the first few weeks has gone, this is me settled into my new life and things are challenging.  Sometimes she cries, sometimes she refuses to eat even though she is hungry, sometimes she cries because she wanted that toy and I gave her a different one and often she cries when I leave the room (isn't her separation anxiety supposed to come at more like 9 months?), but having a down day isn't the same as being depressed.  i have to allow myself to feel rubbish without worrying that I am becoming ill, for that will only perpetuate the problem!

I love my little girl and I wouldn't not have her for the world, but my mental health had been stable for only about 2 years when she showed up, I took a big risk and I am pleased to report that, so far, we are all doing well :-)

So grateful

Today I hold my little girl tight and I cry, they are tears of joy for what I have and tears of sadness for my friend who is today having a medical miscarriage because her baby will not be able to survive and will put her own health at risk.

I waited such a long time for my chance to be a Mum, but not because of infertility (which my friend also knows about, this is an IVF miracle baby) and not because of loss, I am very blessed to have fallen pregnant on my third cycle of trying and have carried my first ever baby to full term, my wait was because of my own illhealth.

Therefore I just can't imagine that pain, the suffering that must come with losing your child.

Today I just weep, for what my friend has lost and what I have gained even though I do not deserve it.

I thank God (quite, quite literally) for her and for all she is, even at 3am!

an older picture of Naomi, but still one of my favourites.

To Cry or Not to Cry?

That is the question.

Naomi's night's continue to be unsettled, though she has gone back to waking only once or twice a night, which for her age is pretty good, it just feels horrific because she gave us 3 or 4 weeks of sleeping through the night which led us into a place of false security.

On top of that she seems to be taking longer to settle at nights.  We normally feed to sleep and then put her down, sometimes she wakes during the transfer but a quick bounce from her mummy sees her back to sleep and off we go.  Recently though she has been waking up during the transfer and then needing bounced/rocked/sung to for 30 minutes or so before she goes down.  Last night it took 2 hours! This saw her Dad and I sitting down for a few minutes before 10pm came round and exhausted we went off to bed!

This then brought up the subject of controlled crying and more to the point should we or shouldn't we.  My husband and I are probably both of the opinion that it will need to happen at some point, though I am more inclined to say she is too little now.  What, though, are the alternatives.  We can continue to bounce her as much as she needs which may drive us to the point of distraction, though might preserve our sanity by saving us from the tears.  Is there anything else, though?

I got quite annoyed yesterday having had a moan about things then having lots of people tell me how they got their little ones to sleep but no-one taking into account that Naomi is her own wee self and not a carbon copy of their babies.  People told me to have a routine, this annoyed me because we have one.  People told me to keep her up in the day, despite the fact that not napping got us into a terrible pickle with crying for hours on end for other reasons.  People told me to do controlled crying straight away and others told me to wait.

I get annoyed not because people offer me advice, however, but because there seems to be so much conflicting advice and even evidence, and no clear answers whatsoever.  My husband and I are exhausted and we need to get this sorted and yet no one is even able let alone willing to help us with anything definitive.

Did/do you do controlled crying? What age was your wee one when you did? How do you preserve your sanity throughout the months of sleep deprivation?

Image courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net