twoemu.com

What a great day today was.

I tend to goof around with Levi when he is getting his nappy changed, mainly because it helps to reduce the unhappiness he feels at the time. He genuinely HATES being in a wet or poopy nappy, once it’s wet TAKE IT OFF NOW!

We play a game where I give him kisses on the palms of his hands, which he now lifts up for me to kiss, we only started the game 2 days ago, so he catches on fast. I also blow raspberries on his tummy, which he seems to enjoy. Today, I had a huge somewhat goofy conversation with him about how much he was peeing as I was changing him & was play lecturing him about how he should ease up on the beer & started to question him about who his supplier was etc.  Then the most magical thing happened, he laughed, not that he hasn’t laughed before, it was just that this time the laugh lasted for an extended period of time, almost hysterical laughing - it was beautiful.

He has done a lot this week, said Hi, Mummy, learned how to splash really well when he is having a bath, lift up his arms to show that he wants up, move around in his cot or even on the floor & lift up & play with toys, wonder what he will be doing in the next couple of days?

Thanks to the neighbours who loaned us one of their cars, whilst they are away, I took Levi with me today to get a massage, which was lovely. I wasn’t sure how it would go, but he quite happily laid on the floor & played. I had him positioned so that I could see him when I was face down on the table & he could look up at me, which I think helped. He is such a charmer though & had the masseuse wrapped around his little finger, a bit like how he has his mum & dad.

After my massage I did a little bit of shopping, & I continued to receive compliments from people about how cute Levi was & also how big he is. I had one old guy tell me that Levi was really cute & asked how old he was. When I said that he was 3 months, he was surprised. My response surprised him even more though when I said “Yeah I know, it’s hard to imagine that he came outta me”, he looked me up & down & his gaze stuck “down there”, so I figure we both did something a little awkward there I like mixing it up a little & adding some humour to the conversation, whilst telling me that my kid is cute, is kinda cool to hear, I like to say more than just a boring thanks back.

Just had to share this - Mum’s love good for child’s brain

So before non parents, judge parents for choosing to be with their kids instead of sending them off to child care or the likes, actually think what that might mean.

I totally get that it isn’t always possible to do so, but if you can, even for a little while, it’s rewarding in more ways than one.

If I wasn’t at home with Levi (which would be pretty fucked, as he is only 3 months old) I wouldn’t have heard him say Mum, Hello, Hi & yesterday he called me Mummy. Nor would I have been able to observe him lifting & holding toys & playing with them for the first time, also something that has happened in the last week. They grow up really fast & you can’t turn back the clocks of time to get back those experiences. It’s such a privilege to spend this time with Levi now, one of the hardest jobs, but more rewarding than any other job you could have, something that only those that have an interest in kids can appreciate, then you become a parent & you get an even deeper understanding.

A mark for every breath you took, every blink, every sleepy yawn.

One for every time you sucked your thumb, waved hello, closed your eyes
and slept in the most perfect darkness.

One for every time you had the hiccups.
One for every dream you dreamed within me.

It isn’t very pretty anymore.
Some may even think it ugly.

That’s OK.

It was your home.

It’s where I first grew to love you, where I lay my hand as I dreamed about who you were and who you would be.

It held you until my arms could,
and for that, I will always find something beautiful in it.

~ Cassie Fox

I had a dreadful nights sleep last night, due to being so sore. Guess you get that with hypermobility, at least the type that I have. I couldn’t actually hold Levi earlier in the morning, so at least Geoff was around to help. I had to succumb earlier in the week & wear my wrist braces, so I knew that the writing was on the wall in terms of experiencing more pain. I guess that it’s not that I never have pain, I can just normally hide it well. The intensity can vary, so some days it’s not too hard to hide at all & then there are days like today where you know there isn’t any way that you can hide it, especially if someone was to see you. Even with being so sore & spending a lot of my time trying to find a masseuse locally, which I did & made an appointment to see tomorrow, I had a fantastic day with Levi.

Levi spent most of the day playing in his cot & cuddled up with me. He had a rather big day the other day, so I usually try to give him some downtime, usually a day or two at home for him to laze about, play & sleep. He managed to say Mummy today, which was amazing & tonight we had a wonderful time, splashing each other when he had his bath.

The writing has been on the wall for Levi to have a poop explosion. He tends not to poop when we are out & about now, unlike times gone by when he did it everywhere & anywhere. He also started pooping every second day, still being breastfed full time, it’s just his body changing & adjusting. Ages ago he stopped pooping in the night, which was fantastic for Geoff, as he mostly sees wet nappies when he is at home, except on weekends then he gets a few. Today’s Poop Explosion takes the cake though.

He was sitting on my lap at the time. whilst I was sitting at my computer & I felt & heard him poop. I thought nothing of it, until I realised that my hand was covered in poop & it had seeped out onto my clothes - bugger! I had the good sense to grab a dark hand towel from the cupboard on the way, putting it down on the change table first, before I laid him on it. Good call, he was pretty much covered in poop from the waist down. It was not a, let’s use a few wipes to clean this up poop, this was huge, so I decided to fill the bathroom sink with water & wash him, it took 4 sinks full of water to wash him down. Once he was clean, dried, put in a new nappy, I set him down on the floor & continued the clean up, washing his nappy out first. Then I grabbed the laundry detergent & washed his nice WHITE sleeper (WTF is wrong with the people who make baby clothes, light colours? really?) & my pants. I put the open bottle ontop of the toilet, forgetting that there is a slight curvature to it, so lucky me also had to clean up a HUGE mess of laundry soap when that fell onto the floor (fortunately Levi wasn’t close it). Once all that was sorted, Levi was dressed & put in his “chair of cheer” & it was my turn to clean up. My shower was somewhat rushed though, as he managed to pee & wanted his nappy changed (hates being poopy or wet, so you have to change him now - should be good for toilet training though).

Just before his bath time tonight, he did another rather impressive poop, so we had a pre-wash before the “actual” bath again, managing to drip it on the floor as I took off his nappy, at least it didn’t seep out of his nappy like the one earlier though. I managed to fill the bath a little high & Levi managed to soak me as a result, taking great delight in doing so. I have decided to change the washing order for his bath, previously we were washing his head first & then the rest of his body, but I like to wash his body first, wash his hair & then his butt etc. I think that it helps him retain more of his body heat that way too.

Last Thursday Levi started saying MUM & he has been trying to say Hello for a while now, today he managed to say it as a discernible Hello, not just something that sounded like it.

You can’t exactly prompt him to say anything at the drop of a hat, but he is definitely working towards talking.

I’m quite excited that he is making progress in starting to talk verbally, it’s still a bit of shock that he is doing it so soon. Guess all our hard work & my many conversations with Levi throughout the day are paying off.

Winter is a lovely time to make soup & other comfort foods like roasts. As much as it was rather temping to cook the whole pig leg I discovered at the supermarket the other day for only $23 (+ tax), I neither have the cooking space or the climate to do it. If we could cook it in a firepit style in the backyard, I would but, snow & ice is a bit of an issue at the moment, perhaps something to do in the summer …hmmm, although I think that I would prefer lamb as compared to pork, or we could try both…..

Anyhow, the last couple of days I have been making soups. I made a nice pumpkin soup on Friday & noticed that there was a recipe for potato & leek soup on the tie that was holding the leeks together so on Sunday I decided to make an adapted version of the potato & leek soup, without low fat milk (I mean why even bother anyhow, if it’s low fat) & it turned out beautifully. I made it again Monday & today we had a hearty chicken & veg soup.

Meals like roasts, soups, Indian curries & even sushi seem to be a lot easier to do than something like a stir-fry these days. With a stir-fry you need to time adding everything into the pot with a bit more precision or you end up with shitty veggies that have had the crap cooked out of them because you have had to attend to a little person who needs you NOW, so I tend not to cook them, unless Geoff is already home. Vietnamese rice wraps, are pretty good as well & hard to stuff up really, unless you are inept or VERY sleep deprived.

Both are going around at the moment. I lucked out & got the sinus infection, which is actually quite cool. I had Pneumonia a lot as a kid, here in Canada, so it feels like I have ticked something else off the list - wohoo! The good thing about it is that because I am breastfeeding, antibiotics are out of the question - wohoo.

It sounds like there is a bit of clostridium difficile going around at the moment too. That relates how? Well, if you take antibiotics it strips your body of all the bacteria, even the good stuff, so I just upped my chances of not getting sick with C. Diff.

Anyhow, I have 2 weeks to improve OR to actually use the nasal spray I was given & hydrasense. It sounds like it will just get better with lots of hydration anyhow, so sticking to that for now. I have been sick with worse things in the past, pretty sure I can cope with a bit of fluid in my ears/ stuffiness in my sinuses in general.

Yes, I have to admit that I am partially to blame for the recent breakdown of a “friendship”. Would I do things differently if I could go back, probably. I simply wouldn’t have gone to a friends place because I felt uncomfortable with it. It actually took Geoff a long time to convince me to go, which I did against my better judgement. I was quite content to stay at home, but Geoff was keen to go, so we did. I then felt the need to talk about how I felt online (as I do) & have offended a few people. This will be the last time that I speak of it….

I acknowledge that my perspective is different to others, but that is it, it’s simply my perspective. I was a new mum (still am really) in an environment where it was clear that people had issues with me breastfeeding. Being asked to feed him in a room upstairs seemed wrong. How often are you invited into  someone else’s home & instructed that a member of your family can only eat in a room separate from everyone else? But OK, I will suck it up. By doing so, it meant that there were long stints spent upstairs feeding him, whilst everyone else socialised.

I was particularly annoyed when Levi was given to someone to hold by someone else. Geoff started the whole process of passing him onto someone when we arrived, which I had thought that we had agreed would not be happening. Unfortunately once the kid is passed to one person, everyone else in the room then feels the baby is up for grabs, not really sure why, but it’s something we have noticed happens. He was passed around & at one stage was  put in a lying down position, by the time I saw it, it was too little too late. Both Geoff & I know YOU DO NOT put him in a lying down position, which is how he sits when he is being breastfed & then fail to deliver, staring down at him (as this person did) whilst he went off his nut.

That was really the beginning of the end, I know that people tried to help to calm him, even ensuring that I ate my food, which I did rather hastily. I really don’t eat that fast normally, it’s a learned skill that you get as a mum, there are very few meals that I find enjoyment in eating. I knew that people were trying to help, so I tried to let them. Only one of those people that held him was familiar to him. I should have just said, you know what, it’s just Geoff & I + that person who should hold him, sorry but that’s how it is, so again my own fault there in hindsight.

Perhaps my use of the term mauling was a little much for people, but for a little baby, only 2 months old, being passed around by people is actually TOO MUCH. It might not seem like a mauling to others, but for me at the time it conveyed how I perceived he felt. If you overstimulate a child, by passing them around & trying to entertain them (as everyone does with a baby when given the chance) when they have had enough stimulation, it upsets them when it continues. When they are upset they gulp air. Babies can only breathe through their nose until they are 6 months old & then they learn to breathe through their mouth. It doesn’t sound like much, but by gulping air, this gives them gas, which you then have to work on to get them to pass, or it causes them a lot of discomfort, thus more crying.

Levi is a baby who is fed on demand, which is regarded as the best way to breastfeed, & has worked really well for us. When you breastfeed, your body is triggered to make more milk when your child cries (& as I have discovered certain types of music can also do it) so whilst it might be a mild inconvenience for the non mothers in the room, having Levi crying meant that the discomfort I already felt for being in that situation was now compounded by boobs that were quickly becoming engorged. You cannot even begin to appreciate how uncomfortable that is, until you experience it.

In the end, it just wasn’t enjoyable for me & whilst I appreciate that people tried to help, & there were accommodations made with food, I was stressed out to start with & knowing that Levi was also stressed just compounded the issue. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.