So hubby is away and yet life must go on. So last night I tried to go out and do something just for me, it would have been pure indulgence in that I was meeting up with some people from church to try and talk through some stuff from my past and to lay some of it to rest. It was time to forget about being a Mummy and just be me, it was time to focus on what my needs were rather than those of my little girl.
The babysitter came, we had dinner then I bathed Naomi and put her down to sleep. She was asleep for about 25 minutes before I walked out the door. I had an ominous feeling though.
I had been out for about an hour when the babysitter rang, she was crying and had been since not long after I left. Clearly, I came back home. I have now managed to settle my child, though experience tells me I have a pretty awful night ahead of me, as Naomi is likely to wake quite often in an attempt to make sure I am still around, or perhaps to punish me for going out in the first place!
How do you feel about babysitters though? I feel very mixed about them, on the one hand I think it is reasonable and healthy to need and want time away from the baby and to do things that aren't completely focused on being a parent. On the other hand, I think it is perfectly reasonable for my baby at not quite 6 months old to expect her Mummy to be there when she needs her. I think it reasonable that she won't settle for someone she doesn't know very well (which unfortunately includes grandparents, seeing as we live so far from family).
The night before last I went out and left Naomi with a babysitter and she didn't wake once, last night she woke almost immediately on my leaving*. Should I have stayed at home? Should I have waited for night her Dad was here? Do I only feel guilty because it went "wrong"? Or should I feel guilty anyway?
Naomi is a good wee girl, I hate the idea that I caused her to be upset but maybe it is a life lesson she just needs to learn?...
*This makes it sound like we leave her often, in fact this was only the 5th time she has ever been left with anyone other than Mummy or Daddy, ever.
Wednesday, 13 July 2011
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Home Alone
Hubby has gone away, he left last night and doesn't get back till Saturday.
I HATE when he goes away, I really am a better mother when he is here, I get too stressed and anxious while he is away. Even before I was a mother I coped much better when he was around compared to when he was gone, but now the contrast seems even stronger.
Stuff that I normally do without thinking about it (like eating) becomes a major struggle and now I have to make sure I do everything for Naomi, I become even more of an afterthought. I decided not to brush my teeth last night for having come upstairs, I couldn't face going down our squeaky stair case and waking the baby, again! if hubby had been here, I would have brushed my teeth for he would have been here to help *if* she had woken.
Even going to baby groups, which I normally do to help me get through the day with some remnants of sanity in tact, becomes much more difficult, becomes much more challenging and so often gets forgotten about, before I know it the only words I have spoken out loud are "What a big poo" and "Is somebody tired?" (yes, me!) which does my ability to cope no good at all.
The hardest time is that time between when hubby would normally get home from work and baby going to bed, I feel like I normally rely on hubby to keep us going through that time and now I have to pull some energy from a place that doesn't exist and do that myself :-(
So how do you cope when you are home alone with the baby?
I HATE when he goes away, I really am a better mother when he is here, I get too stressed and anxious while he is away. Even before I was a mother I coped much better when he was around compared to when he was gone, but now the contrast seems even stronger.
Stuff that I normally do without thinking about it (like eating) becomes a major struggle and now I have to make sure I do everything for Naomi, I become even more of an afterthought. I decided not to brush my teeth last night for having come upstairs, I couldn't face going down our squeaky stair case and waking the baby, again! if hubby had been here, I would have brushed my teeth for he would have been here to help *if* she had woken.
Even going to baby groups, which I normally do to help me get through the day with some remnants of sanity in tact, becomes much more difficult, becomes much more challenging and so often gets forgotten about, before I know it the only words I have spoken out loud are "What a big poo" and "Is somebody tired?" (yes, me!) which does my ability to cope no good at all.
The hardest time is that time between when hubby would normally get home from work and baby going to bed, I feel like I normally rely on hubby to keep us going through that time and now I have to pull some energy from a place that doesn't exist and do that myself :-(
So how do you cope when you are home alone with the baby?
Sunday, 10 July 2011
Friday, 8 July 2011
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 :-(
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 :-(
Thursday, 7 July 2011
Dummies...
As far as I am concerned this is another of those "must-do" topics if you have a parenting blog of any description. Unfortunately it is difficult to do such a topic without sounding like you are better than everyone else (in my opinion) and so in case I inadvertently come across that way, please know that I very much do NOT consider myself better than anyone else, in fact, normally quite the opposite.
Before Naomi was born, when we didn't know whether she was a boy or a girl and when we still called her Allsort, hubby and I discussed dummies and decided that we weren't 100% keen on the idea but that it did feel like it might save our sanity somehow. So we went out and bought two dummies, just in case they might help.
When Naomi was born we didn't put it in her mouth, we put my boob in her mouth and then I went up to the ward and she cried and she cried and she cried. I fed her. She cried. I changed her. She cried. I burped her. She cried. I cuddled her. She cried. The ward staff changed her, burped her and cuddled her and yet she cried and cried and cried some more!
The midwives asked me if I had a dummy and I did, so we tried to put it in her mouth. She cried, if anything louder than she had before. We gave up on the dummy idea and just dealt with her crying.
Thankfully, the crying was short lived (not that it felt that way at the time) and after only one or two days she became one of the most content babies I have ever met (though when she does cry she does it loud, I think she likes to make up for all the quiet time!) so the dummy kind of got forgot about.
Then it got hard to put her down to sleep, it was taking hours (literally) each night to get her to settle and hubby and I were slowly but surely losing our sanity! So out came the dummies again. We got into a routine whereby you could rock her to sleep and put her down, then if she woke up you put the dummy in her mouth and it would help her go off again.
For quite a few weeks this did result in, what was affectionately known as, the dummy run. That slightly annoying part of the evening where she was asleep but where she cried when the dummy fell out and you would have to run back up the stairs and re-plug her! Because of this I was quite pleased when this phase ended and she kind of gave up on the dummy herself. It did mean it was harder to put her down in the first place, but at least once she was down you could walk away and know she would be alright for a few hours.
Then it seemed she wanted the dummy back again, so for the past several weeks we have put her down and if she has woken put the dummy in her mouth which has helped sleep come back. It normally fell out after about two minutes and she didn't care which seemed ideal!
Now though, we seemed to have entered a new phase, one which I am finding more than a little frustrating. Now she seems to expect the dummy when you lay her down, her wee mouth opens in expectation, however, when you put it in her wee hand comes up and pulls it out of her mouth. That would be okay but she does not yet possess the manual dexterity to replace the dummy so begins to cry because the dummy isn't in her mouth, all this despite her being the reason it is no longer there! This phenomenon resulted in me being awake for 60 minutes in the middle of the night, she didn't need fed and fell asleep almost instantly when I rocked her, but then would wake up when she pulled her own dummy out her own mouth. Roll on the next phase!
Before Naomi was born, when we didn't know whether she was a boy or a girl and when we still called her Allsort, hubby and I discussed dummies and decided that we weren't 100% keen on the idea but that it did feel like it might save our sanity somehow. So we went out and bought two dummies, just in case they might help.
When Naomi was born we didn't put it in her mouth, we put my boob in her mouth and then I went up to the ward and she cried and she cried and she cried. I fed her. She cried. I changed her. She cried. I burped her. She cried. I cuddled her. She cried. The ward staff changed her, burped her and cuddled her and yet she cried and cried and cried some more!
The midwives asked me if I had a dummy and I did, so we tried to put it in her mouth. She cried, if anything louder than she had before. We gave up on the dummy idea and just dealt with her crying.
Thankfully, the crying was short lived (not that it felt that way at the time) and after only one or two days she became one of the most content babies I have ever met (though when she does cry she does it loud, I think she likes to make up for all the quiet time!) so the dummy kind of got forgot about.
Then it got hard to put her down to sleep, it was taking hours (literally) each night to get her to settle and hubby and I were slowly but surely losing our sanity! So out came the dummies again. We got into a routine whereby you could rock her to sleep and put her down, then if she woke up you put the dummy in her mouth and it would help her go off again.
For quite a few weeks this did result in, what was affectionately known as, the dummy run. That slightly annoying part of the evening where she was asleep but where she cried when the dummy fell out and you would have to run back up the stairs and re-plug her! Because of this I was quite pleased when this phase ended and she kind of gave up on the dummy herself. It did mean it was harder to put her down in the first place, but at least once she was down you could walk away and know she would be alright for a few hours.
Then it seemed she wanted the dummy back again, so for the past several weeks we have put her down and if she has woken put the dummy in her mouth which has helped sleep come back. It normally fell out after about two minutes and she didn't care which seemed ideal!
Now though, we seemed to have entered a new phase, one which I am finding more than a little frustrating. Now she seems to expect the dummy when you lay her down, her wee mouth opens in expectation, however, when you put it in her wee hand comes up and pulls it out of her mouth. That would be okay but she does not yet possess the manual dexterity to replace the dummy so begins to cry because the dummy isn't in her mouth, all this despite her being the reason it is no longer there! This phenomenon resulted in me being awake for 60 minutes in the middle of the night, she didn't need fed and fell asleep almost instantly when I rocked her, but then would wake up when she pulled her own dummy out her own mouth. Roll on the next phase!
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
No sooner had I come back....
...as I was gone! My baby girl was sick (see previous post), my husband then got sick, I then got sick! Before I knew it we were all lying on the floor (quite literally) and no-one could move and no-one could keep their food down!
The sickness seems to have largely passed, though I as the last to get ill was the first to get better (I think that comes with being a Mum?) and my husband, although much better and back at work today, is not quite right either and I thought Naomi was better but today she showed us all what she thought of sweet potato by being sick in such a way it landed in her own eye! (Does it make me cruel that (after I cleaned her up) I laughed about this?)
It really has made me realise how, as mums, we really do just have to keep going. My husband would take himself off to bed but I still was required to make milk. Come bedtime, too, it was mummy that was expected to continue rocking her to sleep, even though 10 minutes before we had opted for a sponge down rather than a bath as Mummy didn't have the energy to pick the baby up, let alone suspend her in water!
It has really hit home to me that my next holiday will be in about 18 years, assuming I don't have any more children, which, actually, despite it all, I do!!
The sickness seems to have largely passed, though I as the last to get ill was the first to get better (I think that comes with being a Mum?) and my husband, although much better and back at work today, is not quite right either and I thought Naomi was better but today she showed us all what she thought of sweet potato by being sick in such a way it landed in her own eye! (Does it make me cruel that (after I cleaned her up) I laughed about this?)
It really has made me realise how, as mums, we really do just have to keep going. My husband would take himself off to bed but I still was required to make milk. Come bedtime, too, it was mummy that was expected to continue rocking her to sleep, even though 10 minutes before we had opted for a sponge down rather than a bath as Mummy didn't have the energy to pick the baby up, let alone suspend her in water!
It has really hit home to me that my next holiday will be in about 18 years, assuming I don't have any more children, which, actually, despite it all, I do!!
Sunday, 3 July 2011
Breaks my Heart
My little girl is ill, she was vomiting and now it is coming out the other end (I won't attempt to spell that word) and she is dehydrated to the extent that her Dad and I had to trek into the hospital last night at about midnight in search of the child assessment unit which was far too difficult to find so that they could help us in the search for the increasingly elusive wet nappy.
Of course we had been on the unit about 30 minutes when she weed, which made us look like we had been making it up that in the previous 20 hours she had only done one wet nappy and even that was nearly 6 hours before this point! (The one other nappy she wet yesterday was also in front of a doctor!)
I've realised that one of the things stressing me out about her being ill though, although connected to the lack of being able to make it all better I have heard others talk about, is actually that I just don't know what is going on. Yesterday in particular, though today too, she is her usual happy self, playing and engaging. Yet, she obviously isn't well, the vomit will attest to that. I hate that she looks so normal and yet is feeling miserable, I hate that she can't tell me what is going on.
Hopefully tonight we will all sleep a little better by not needing a middle-of-the-might hospital run and hopefully tomorrow we will all be feeling much more human!
Of course we had been on the unit about 30 minutes when she weed, which made us look like we had been making it up that in the previous 20 hours she had only done one wet nappy and even that was nearly 6 hours before this point! (The one other nappy she wet yesterday was also in front of a doctor!)
I've realised that one of the things stressing me out about her being ill though, although connected to the lack of being able to make it all better I have heard others talk about, is actually that I just don't know what is going on. Yesterday in particular, though today too, she is her usual happy self, playing and engaging. Yet, she obviously isn't well, the vomit will attest to that. I hate that she looks so normal and yet is feeling miserable, I hate that she can't tell me what is going on.
Hopefully tonight we will all sleep a little better by not needing a middle-of-the-might hospital run and hopefully tomorrow we will all be feeling much more human!
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