Rose is almost 4 months old. She's nuzzled into my chest right now asleep. Pretty soon she'll be too big to sleep there and I'll miss these snuggly naps. We can finally reply "yes" to the number 1 question from strangers; "does she sleep through the night?". Or at least "most of the time" (she was up at 2am again last night). She's somehow managing to get cuter by the day; babbling away to herself / us / the cat, usually with one or more fingers jammed in her mouth. She's desperate to sit up and is almost managing to balance... she'll be toddling around in no time! She's bursting out of her moses basket so we've got a cot set up ready for her to upgrade to once I feel that her sleeping through the night thing is a bit better established in a few days. She looks tiny in her big girl's cot!
Although Rose takes up 99% of my days, I am managing to continue with my craft stuff. I joined notonthehighstreet.com and this has kept me really busy. Almost too busy. On etsy I make a sale maybe once a month, more if I relist and put in lots of effort, but less if I don't. And on NOTHS (NotOnTheHighStreet) it's more like a sale every couple of days. It's great! I feel like I could sell more if I listed a few more items, especially things that can be personalised (the site seems to be obsessed with personalised gifts), but I don't think I'd be able to keep up with demand if I did that! It was expensive to join the site, but it's a one off fee and I'm hoping to pay it off this financial year so that next year I can start making some real profit. I put my prices up by £1 a few days ago, after long hard thoughts and worrying, and was pleased to make two sales later that same day. I think I worry far too much about over-pricing my work... when I totted up my profit after fees/ materials, I was paying myself less than £2 a brooch, which is just silly really. I need to stop feeling guilty about paying myself a reasonable amount for my hard work.
I also decided to try to do some christmas fairs. An arts event in Leeds at Temple Works asked if I'd like to take part, and it sounds like a really fun event, but I decided to pull out and just concentrate on one big fair...I'm dong the BUST London Craftactular. I've heard that this is a really great fair from people who've sold at it before, and I was really pleased to be accepted. I'm struggling to find time to make stock, but now that Rose is sleeping through the night (mostly!) I can try to get an hour of sewing in after she goes to bed. We're going to spend a weekend in London visiting Rose's cousins, exciting! I'd really love for this craft stuff to pay off enough for me to stay home with Rose long-term, or to only have to work a day or two a week. Dream life!
x x x x x
Wednesday, 14 November 2012
Friday, 12 October 2012
three months
Rose is almost 3 months old. Wow, how did that happen. I keep meaning to blog but never seem to find the time. Rose is in her bouncy chair, with my foot bouncing her, slowly giving in to sleep. I've become a queen of multi-tasking. Multi-tasking feats include eating while breastfeeding, reading while breastfeeding, showering while entertaining Rose, singing while doing everything, hanging washing while swaying baby strapped on to me. The list is endless. Every task needs planning out. Nothing is easy anymore. Even going to the toilet involves deciding what the baby is doing and if I can combine going to the loo with other jobs like taking things up or down stairs or changing Rose's nappy. Life has changed completely. I put Rose in her bouncy chair in the bathroom while I have a shower, poking my head out every few minutes to see her little face. I've added to the multi-tasking fun by opening a notonthehighstreet.com shop for my crafts, so have to fit sewing into my days somewhere.
These have been, without any doubt, the longest three months of my adult life. Some days are never ending. Not to mention the nights. On a "bad" night, when Rose is refusing to sleep in her cot for more than an hour at a time, the only thing that keeps me going is that day will come again eventually, and I look forward to 5am when I can go downstairs and put another night behind me. I can't believe how much Rose has changed in such a relatively short time. She's gone from being a tiny little baby who could barely see or react to things, to a bright aware growing girl. Not that any strangers know she's a girl with her cute bald head! She laughs when I blow rasberrys at her and make funny faces, which melts my heart every time. She's just discovered that her hands belong to her, and has started using them to manouevre things into her mouth. She also loves sucking and chewing her hands. She's given me lovebites on my arm and chin, she's a sucky monster.
And I guess that I've grown and changed too. I feel like a better person with Rose in my life. She's brought out a confidence in me. Confidence to be silly mostly, but also a confidence that I (and Dan) know her better than anyone else, and therefore know what's best for her. I don't question my parenting skills at all, which is surprising really as I had no idea how to look after a baby...it must largely be instictual. The first few weeks of Rose's life I was super emotional, both happy and sad, and although this has calmed a lot I'm still definitely in a vulnerable emotional state. Any thought of Rose coming to harm makes me feel sick to my stomach; a wave of dread comes over me and my eyes fill with tears. This happens almost as readily when I hear of other children being harmed or having horrible illnesses. I didn't expect that to happen to me. I care very much about big picture things; I want Rose to live in a world where we care about the environment and where some people don't have to suffer for other people to live comfortable privileged lives, and I knew that having a baby would make me think about my role in the universe and who I am as a person. This has happened a bit, but at the same time it's also made me concentrate much more on little picture things; the day to day has become central to everything. And our little family being happy together is the most important thing of all. I care about her so much, and I suppose that must have made me a better person too. I'm hugely more patient than ever before, and most of the time when I notice a bad trait in myself - anger or inpatience - I'm able to stop it by remembering that she's more important than any of that sillyness.
I wonder what the next three months will bring.
These have been, without any doubt, the longest three months of my adult life. Some days are never ending. Not to mention the nights. On a "bad" night, when Rose is refusing to sleep in her cot for more than an hour at a time, the only thing that keeps me going is that day will come again eventually, and I look forward to 5am when I can go downstairs and put another night behind me. I can't believe how much Rose has changed in such a relatively short time. She's gone from being a tiny little baby who could barely see or react to things, to a bright aware growing girl. Not that any strangers know she's a girl with her cute bald head! She laughs when I blow rasberrys at her and make funny faces, which melts my heart every time. She's just discovered that her hands belong to her, and has started using them to manouevre things into her mouth. She also loves sucking and chewing her hands. She's given me lovebites on my arm and chin, she's a sucky monster.
And I guess that I've grown and changed too. I feel like a better person with Rose in my life. She's brought out a confidence in me. Confidence to be silly mostly, but also a confidence that I (and Dan) know her better than anyone else, and therefore know what's best for her. I don't question my parenting skills at all, which is surprising really as I had no idea how to look after a baby...it must largely be instictual. The first few weeks of Rose's life I was super emotional, both happy and sad, and although this has calmed a lot I'm still definitely in a vulnerable emotional state. Any thought of Rose coming to harm makes me feel sick to my stomach; a wave of dread comes over me and my eyes fill with tears. This happens almost as readily when I hear of other children being harmed or having horrible illnesses. I didn't expect that to happen to me. I care very much about big picture things; I want Rose to live in a world where we care about the environment and where some people don't have to suffer for other people to live comfortable privileged lives, and I knew that having a baby would make me think about my role in the universe and who I am as a person. This has happened a bit, but at the same time it's also made me concentrate much more on little picture things; the day to day has become central to everything. And our little family being happy together is the most important thing of all. I care about her so much, and I suppose that must have made me a better person too. I'm hugely more patient than ever before, and most of the time when I notice a bad trait in myself - anger or inpatience - I'm able to stop it by remembering that she's more important than any of that sillyness.
I wonder what the next three months will bring.
cliche
All the clichés are true.
She is the best thing that's ever happened to me. It is the hardest job ever. I do love her more than I thought possible. She is the most beautiful baby in the world. I can't remember life before her. I barely get any sleep. The days do escape me without any housework getting done. She is growing up so fast.
She is the best thing that's ever happened to me. It is the hardest job ever. I do love her more than I thought possible. She is the most beautiful baby in the world. I can't remember life before her. I barely get any sleep. The days do escape me without any housework getting done. She is growing up so fast.
Monday, 3 September 2012
breast is best?!
I've been waiting for a day when breastfeeding has become a doddle to write this post, but I fear that day will never come. It's massively well known that breastfeeding is super good for baby, and when deciding how to feed Rose there was no question for me that breastfeeding was the way we'd go. Luckily I know people who'd struggled to breastfeed so I was prepared for it to be tough, otherwise I'd only have had the handful of NHS leaflets to go on which, although practical, fail to mention the world of pain I experienced.
For some reason it's a huge secret, but guess what....breastfeeding hurts. It really really hurts. In the first weeks it takes ages to latch her on right, so while my nipples were taking their time to toughen up I kept getting blisters on them. I cannot describe how painful it is to let a baby feed from a cracked red raw nipple. I nearly cried every time I latched her on. And then there's the days when one breast gets too full of milk and becomes "engorged". This happened quite a lot of times and each time it took days for it to sort itself out. If anything this was even more painful than my broken nip's. I'm squirming just thinking about it. It is starting to finally get easier after nearly 7 weeks, but almost every night I still go to bed saying that I give up because by that time she's always worn out my nipples and I gimace as I peel off my bra. I long for the day when I'll be able to get out of the shower and wrap a towel around myself without screaming and feeling like I've sand-papered my nipples.
I'm proud that I've lasted so long. For some of the last 7 weeks she's been feeding contantly, sometimes for hours at a time, and on the worst days I've been in just as much agony when she's off me as when she's on. We're only just at the point where we can leave the house for an hour or two, because she really was feeding relentlessly. 6 or 7 weeks doesn't sound that long, but when you think I've averaged about 10 feeds a day, that's a LOT of feeds, a lot of hours spent in pain and feeling like a crappy mum.
I feel bad whinging about this, but there's so much positive stuff said about breast being best, and a belief that it'll be a magical bond between mother and baby, that I think it's important to be honest and realistic. I feel a magical mother-baby bond with her anyway, I don't think that it'd be any different if I'd chosen to bottle feed her. We've just started introducing one bottle a day so that I can get a couple of hours break, and because my milk seems to have finally properly come in if she cries during that time then the milk leaks out!
I'm really glad that I chose to breastfeed, but I'm also really really glad that the last 7 weeks are over. I felt a huge pressure to do it and I just wish that people realised how hard it is so that I didn't feel so upset when I've thought about giving up. Rose is growing really well and I'm proud that I've done that, well done boobs.
For some reason it's a huge secret, but guess what....breastfeeding hurts. It really really hurts. In the first weeks it takes ages to latch her on right, so while my nipples were taking their time to toughen up I kept getting blisters on them. I cannot describe how painful it is to let a baby feed from a cracked red raw nipple. I nearly cried every time I latched her on. And then there's the days when one breast gets too full of milk and becomes "engorged". This happened quite a lot of times and each time it took days for it to sort itself out. If anything this was even more painful than my broken nip's. I'm squirming just thinking about it. It is starting to finally get easier after nearly 7 weeks, but almost every night I still go to bed saying that I give up because by that time she's always worn out my nipples and I gimace as I peel off my bra. I long for the day when I'll be able to get out of the shower and wrap a towel around myself without screaming and feeling like I've sand-papered my nipples.
I'm proud that I've lasted so long. For some of the last 7 weeks she's been feeding contantly, sometimes for hours at a time, and on the worst days I've been in just as much agony when she's off me as when she's on. We're only just at the point where we can leave the house for an hour or two, because she really was feeding relentlessly. 6 or 7 weeks doesn't sound that long, but when you think I've averaged about 10 feeds a day, that's a LOT of feeds, a lot of hours spent in pain and feeling like a crappy mum.
I feel bad whinging about this, but there's so much positive stuff said about breast being best, and a belief that it'll be a magical bond between mother and baby, that I think it's important to be honest and realistic. I feel a magical mother-baby bond with her anyway, I don't think that it'd be any different if I'd chosen to bottle feed her. We've just started introducing one bottle a day so that I can get a couple of hours break, and because my milk seems to have finally properly come in if she cries during that time then the milk leaks out!
I'm really glad that I chose to breastfeed, but I'm also really really glad that the last 7 weeks are over. I felt a huge pressure to do it and I just wish that people realised how hard it is so that I didn't feel so upset when I've thought about giving up. Rose is growing really well and I'm proud that I've done that, well done boobs.
Thursday, 9 August 2012
Labour Day
This post will probably be fairly graphic, please don't read if you have a low pain tolerence or ever want children.
I read a lot of "labour stories" on websites like mumsnet while I was waiting for Rose to come, and I feel like I should write mine down. For the first week after birth I wanted to stop dwelling on how traumatic labour was, we had a pretty rough one, but now I don't want to completely forget how it went so it seems a good time to get it out.
So on the Monday evening I started getting pains a lot like strong period pains, which had been happening on and off for weeks, so although I wanted it to be the start of something more I didn't get my hopes up too much. By 11pm I knew it was the start of labour; the pains were really bad and coming quite often. I spent the night sitting around, having a bath, and generally writhing around in agony. We went to hospital in the morning, I think maybe about 6am, and a midwife (who we recognised from One Born Every Minute, woo!) examined me. I wasn't enough cm to go into the delivery suite, I think about 3cm, so she asked us to wait an hour to be examined again for them to decide where I should go next. We walked around the hospital to try and help her push down, which was really hard as the contractions were really painful and had me doubled over every 5 minutes. When I got re-examined I still wasn't ready for the delivery suite but the midwife sent me to a ward for 3 hours to wait to see if things would progress. I was so tired by this point, I'd had no sleep and the contractions were really exhausting, so I had a lie-down for an hour or so before walking around again. I can still remember how bad the pain was when contractions came, I'd have to stop and hold onto something and try to breathe while I waited for it to pass. At the end of the 3 hours a midwife said that she didn't think the contractions were strong enough because I wasn't screaming, but I asked her to examine me any way. I was 5 and a half cm, you can go to the delivery suite at 4cm, so I just had to wait for a free bed and I could go and get some real pain relief. That felt such a relief. In the delivery suite I decided to have some diamorphine, after I found the gas and air didn't give me enough relief. I think some people might think that diamorphine and similar pain relief is to take the pain away and make labour easier right until birth, but it's really not. It's good for giving you a break, as although you feel the contractions you feel like you can cope, and feel spaced out so you can have a rest...exactly what I needed. But you can't have it within an hour of giving birth, so it's not for the last stages of labour really (because it passes over to baby and she'd be born all groggy and stuggle to breastfeed). So that slowed things down a bit, but gave me a chance to close my eyes. And then came the longest few hours EVER. I don't know what time I'd gone into the delivery suite, probably around 3pm, and Rose was eventually born at 5.30am the next morning...so this bit took a LONG time. Contractions were really really bad, and the midwife told me that my waters were bulging right under her head but despite standing and kneeling trying to help them to break they just wouldn't burst. I could feel a horrible pressure as well as the contractions, and gas and air was making me throw up. After hours and hours of this and finding out that things weren't really progressing I decided the time had come to have an epidural. I couldn't cope with it any longer. The epidural obviously took away the pain of the contractions, and I couldn't feel any urge to push because I was numb, but the midwives tell you when to push and after an hour of pushing (HARD WORK) they brought in a doctor. Rose's head was swollen from pushing and they had a good feel around and decided that she was facing back to back. This was why contractions were so bad and why it was taking so long. They had to turn her around, which meant going into theatre and them making a cut so that they could use forceps to turn her. This was so scary, after such a long and tiring labour I was exhausted and lying numb on a bed with people stood over me in scrubs in an operating theatre was terrorfying. Well obviously the ending is happy, Rose was safely pulled out of me(!) and plonked on my chest. It was emotional! It turned out that my cervix was torn by the forceps, which meant that I lost a lot of blood, which was a really odd feeling seeing the doctors looking a bit worried and stitching me up, without being able to feel anything. I was quite poorly from loosing all the blood, and the lack of sleep, and was barely able to feed her right at the start, but I got better pretty quickly.
So that was labour. The midwives who helped both pre and post labour were all amazing, I felt really well looked after and they calmed what should have been a much more upsetting situation. I couldn't wait to go home, and luckily they said that my iron levels before labour were great otherwise I'd have had to have a blood transfusion (go me and and my iron rich veggie pregnancy diet!), so I only stayed one night.
We're okay now.
x x x x
I read a lot of "labour stories" on websites like mumsnet while I was waiting for Rose to come, and I feel like I should write mine down. For the first week after birth I wanted to stop dwelling on how traumatic labour was, we had a pretty rough one, but now I don't want to completely forget how it went so it seems a good time to get it out.
So on the Monday evening I started getting pains a lot like strong period pains, which had been happening on and off for weeks, so although I wanted it to be the start of something more I didn't get my hopes up too much. By 11pm I knew it was the start of labour; the pains were really bad and coming quite often. I spent the night sitting around, having a bath, and generally writhing around in agony. We went to hospital in the morning, I think maybe about 6am, and a midwife (who we recognised from One Born Every Minute, woo!) examined me. I wasn't enough cm to go into the delivery suite, I think about 3cm, so she asked us to wait an hour to be examined again for them to decide where I should go next. We walked around the hospital to try and help her push down, which was really hard as the contractions were really painful and had me doubled over every 5 minutes. When I got re-examined I still wasn't ready for the delivery suite but the midwife sent me to a ward for 3 hours to wait to see if things would progress. I was so tired by this point, I'd had no sleep and the contractions were really exhausting, so I had a lie-down for an hour or so before walking around again. I can still remember how bad the pain was when contractions came, I'd have to stop and hold onto something and try to breathe while I waited for it to pass. At the end of the 3 hours a midwife said that she didn't think the contractions were strong enough because I wasn't screaming, but I asked her to examine me any way. I was 5 and a half cm, you can go to the delivery suite at 4cm, so I just had to wait for a free bed and I could go and get some real pain relief. That felt such a relief. In the delivery suite I decided to have some diamorphine, after I found the gas and air didn't give me enough relief. I think some people might think that diamorphine and similar pain relief is to take the pain away and make labour easier right until birth, but it's really not. It's good for giving you a break, as although you feel the contractions you feel like you can cope, and feel spaced out so you can have a rest...exactly what I needed. But you can't have it within an hour of giving birth, so it's not for the last stages of labour really (because it passes over to baby and she'd be born all groggy and stuggle to breastfeed). So that slowed things down a bit, but gave me a chance to close my eyes. And then came the longest few hours EVER. I don't know what time I'd gone into the delivery suite, probably around 3pm, and Rose was eventually born at 5.30am the next morning...so this bit took a LONG time. Contractions were really really bad, and the midwife told me that my waters were bulging right under her head but despite standing and kneeling trying to help them to break they just wouldn't burst. I could feel a horrible pressure as well as the contractions, and gas and air was making me throw up. After hours and hours of this and finding out that things weren't really progressing I decided the time had come to have an epidural. I couldn't cope with it any longer. The epidural obviously took away the pain of the contractions, and I couldn't feel any urge to push because I was numb, but the midwives tell you when to push and after an hour of pushing (HARD WORK) they brought in a doctor. Rose's head was swollen from pushing and they had a good feel around and decided that she was facing back to back. This was why contractions were so bad and why it was taking so long. They had to turn her around, which meant going into theatre and them making a cut so that they could use forceps to turn her. This was so scary, after such a long and tiring labour I was exhausted and lying numb on a bed with people stood over me in scrubs in an operating theatre was terrorfying. Well obviously the ending is happy, Rose was safely pulled out of me(!) and plonked on my chest. It was emotional! It turned out that my cervix was torn by the forceps, which meant that I lost a lot of blood, which was a really odd feeling seeing the doctors looking a bit worried and stitching me up, without being able to feel anything. I was quite poorly from loosing all the blood, and the lack of sleep, and was barely able to feed her right at the start, but I got better pretty quickly.
So that was labour. The midwives who helped both pre and post labour were all amazing, I felt really well looked after and they calmed what should have been a much more upsetting situation. I couldn't wait to go home, and luckily they said that my iron levels before labour were great otherwise I'd have had to have a blood transfusion (go me and and my iron rich veggie pregnancy diet!), so I only stayed one night.
We're okay now.
x x x x
Saturday, 4 August 2012
A Rose
Rose is here. She was almost two weeks late, born Wednesday 18th July at 5.30am. Labour was horrific, I think I'll do a post about that seperately as now that a few weeks have past it's not too upsetting to talk about. She's perfect. Nothing could have prepared me for how much I love her. Here she is in hospital...
In an adorable outfit looking like a gremlin...
And with her mum...
Motherhood is the hardest thing I've ever been through. She sleeps in dribs and drabs, paying no attention to the time of day, and at night it's incredibly hard to join in with her blase attitude to time and not get upset. But every time we have a "good night", with her sleeping in her cot for a few hours, it feels like a huge success. The emotional rolercoaster is hard to describe, and to be honest the first week of tears and fears is already difficult to remember. I can't get enough of her and kiss her head all day long. I love picking her up and remembering how delicious she smells. I could look at her forever. Breastfeeding is infinitely harder than I could have prepared for, I might do a post about it because I want to always remember how proud I should be that I've stuck with it despite the pain and relentlessness. She's sometimes feeding for hours at the moment, which means that doing anything is impossible...I have become the queen of multi-tasking eating meals with one hand while she's attached to my chest. She's growing and changing by the day, it's so mind blowing to watch. Our mantra has become "it'll get easier".
x x x x x x
In an adorable outfit looking like a gremlin...
And with her mum...
Motherhood is the hardest thing I've ever been through. She sleeps in dribs and drabs, paying no attention to the time of day, and at night it's incredibly hard to join in with her blase attitude to time and not get upset. But every time we have a "good night", with her sleeping in her cot for a few hours, it feels like a huge success. The emotional rolercoaster is hard to describe, and to be honest the first week of tears and fears is already difficult to remember. I can't get enough of her and kiss her head all day long. I love picking her up and remembering how delicious she smells. I could look at her forever. Breastfeeding is infinitely harder than I could have prepared for, I might do a post about it because I want to always remember how proud I should be that I've stuck with it despite the pain and relentlessness. She's sometimes feeding for hours at the moment, which means that doing anything is impossible...I have become the queen of multi-tasking eating meals with one hand while she's attached to my chest. She's growing and changing by the day, it's so mind blowing to watch. Our mantra has become "it'll get easier".
x x x x x x
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
bump diary
I'm 39 weeks and 5 days.
I hoped she'd be here by now! I'm sure that every first mum probably feels the same... for a while I felt like it'd be any day, but that feeling seems to have gone and now I wouldn't be suprised if she hangs on for at least another week. But still hoping for any day now and constantly sitting on a birthing ball/walking around/doing yoga stuff to try to help her find the exit. I'm SO READY.
Here's week 36 - week 39. I think you can see when she dropped down from week 37 - 38, the bump's really low now. That's a good sign!
I hoped she'd be here by now! I'm sure that every first mum probably feels the same... for a while I felt like it'd be any day, but that feeling seems to have gone and now I wouldn't be suprised if she hangs on for at least another week. But still hoping for any day now and constantly sitting on a birthing ball/walking around/doing yoga stuff to try to help her find the exit. I'm SO READY.
Here's week 36 - week 39. I think you can see when she dropped down from week 37 - 38, the bump's really low now. That's a good sign!
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