So here we are with a baby!

The most beautiful and charming baby in the world, but a baby nonetheless, with all of the challenges and hopeless despair that go with it.

Bug (Eleanor, but I call her Bug, or her Bugship) is nearly five and a half months old and it's been quite a ride so far but things are beginning to slot into place. Food, sleep, play, development, what I didn't realise is that everything needs to be learnt (by the baby and you). There's no plonking the baby down and assuming she will sleep, at least not after the first couple of weeks. Food can be scorned (rarely by mine) or more frighteningly absorbed with unsatiable gusto (growth spurt? starvation?). I breastfeed and do so exclusively and it can turn into a real marathonic nightmare. Babies do not amuse themselves, want constant cuddling and cannot fall asleep alone. All the clichés of the sobbing exhausted parents are true.

So how are we doing? Better now than at the beginning...

Food. So I breastfeed, thanks to the patience of the midwives at the maternity who time after time showed me how to do it. It's not particularly easy at first but it's been worth it and is now the easiest and most natural thing in the world.

I've been doing it on demand till quite recently and have found that as well as feed Bug, it comforts her and has from day one been a way of calming her down and sending her to sleep. The difficulties have been the fact that for the first three months there are extreme growth spurts and feeding on demand becomes living without a t-shirt, stuck in sitting position with a guzzling baby always crying for more.

 I remember the three and six week ones with real horror. Thankfully I didn't cave in and switch to formula as the constant sucking is actually what makes the breasts produce more food as the baby grows. Bug is now a fat and healthy baby who breastfeeds at day and has a bottled of expressed milk in the evening as part of her bedtime routine (more about the pump later...).  In the last week or so I've added a combo rice/corn/tapioca cereal to her evening bottle, and she has a bit of mashed veg at lunch (carrot and courgette so far) which she loves. I'm lucky that this baby has no food issues apart from wanting to feed all the time, which i am slowly cutting down by having stricter meal times (yeah right). This means:

7AM Breakfast - Breastmilk at source
10.30 Mid-morning snack - Ditto

1PM Lunch - Breastmilk at source and a few teaspoons of mashed veg
4.00 Afternoon tea - Breastmilk at source
6.30 Evening snack - Ditto
8.30-9PM Supper - Bottle of breastmilk with cereal.

OK, I realise this is way too much, she should be on four meals a day but she desn't eat so much at each meal except the night bottle, because...

Sleep. This has been ,and still is to a certain extent, our big challenge. What I didn't realise was how often babies need to sleep. Every couple of hours when they're six months old and more than that when they're smaller (mine should be at about 1h45 at the moment!). For weeks, months, Bug was, unbeknownst to us, exhausted and would just scream and scream for hours driving me insane and all of us desperate. One way of calming her and getting her to sleep was to "titty her up". Let me explain.

For the first four and half months, except for rare occasions in the pushchair or baby-carrier, Bug would only fall asleep mid-feed, on her maternity cushion, on my lap, with a mouth full of nipple which I was sometimes able to slide out without causing her to wake up. And then, if I wanted her to sleep, I was stuck. For day naps I just sat there for an hour or so until my muscles spasmed and she'd wake up, but at night things were complicated. She would fall asleep lying on the cushion which is a long curved thing that wraps around my waist. Once knocked out (code MC - milky coma), I would gently recline and let Gorgeous Chook slide his hands under her, and start to lift her away from me.

Then performing incredible silent acrobatics in slow motion, holding her in exactly the same position she had fallen asleep in, we would glide across the flat to lay the sleeping beauty GENTLY into her cot. Nine times out of ten she would wake up at some point during this delicate procedure and we would be back to square one, having to "titty her up" to get her back to sleep. After a few months of this I decided it was easier to feed her in bed and sleep in sitting position in my own bed, sometimes waking Chook at ungodly hours to settle her (still in silent acrobat style) in her cot next to us. This worked better because she was in super-deep sleep, but not always.

Apart from being uncomfortable and back-deforming (I'm now a hunchback with chronic shoulder pain) it was also incredibly dangerous. SIDS, hellooo? I would wake up in the night, with Eleanor's feet sticking out of the crook in my elbow, her head buried somewhere between my tummy and the cushion. Or disppeared down the side of the cushion. Too much was too much and we decided to try sleep training.

Now, it's important to know that out there online there are websites and forums and blogs and everything dedicated to getting baby to sleep so I have no intention of trying to imitate what is already very well done. If you're really interested try this : how to successfully teach a baby to sleep. It's wonderful. Welcome to the world of CIO, PUPD, NF, BW and all of it.

Basically there are a million ways of getting baby to sleep: from let them cry it out (CIO) alone till they fall asleep, to hugging and cradling and whispering them to sleep, and anything in between.

We went for Ferber which was tough but wonderfully efficient. Ferber was the guy and this was his method: after a bedtime routine full of love and tenderness, checking that baby is fed, dry, tired and loved one leaves the baby to cry to sleep, though with frequent checks that become more few and far between.

We started when Bug was 4 and a half months old, on June 1st. It's not recommended for babies under 4-5 months and we had tried once before but very quickly aborted mission.So after a lovely bedtime routine of bath, change, story, feed, cuddle and night-night, we lay her down and shut the door.

You shut the door and let the baby cry to sleep with only brief checks every so often to reassure her that she's not being left to the wolves. It is absolutely awful as it can take up to an hour so Chook and I would just sit in the other room in silence, nursing triple whiskys and occasionnally whispering hoarsley "is it time to check on her yet?" (no, it's been three minutes). Horrible but efficient. She now conks out after five or ten minutes of slightly high-pitched whingeing. And sleeps till 6.30 usually.

Naps have been less successful; she is resisting and can scream up to an hour so I usually put her down for one nap like that and have another with the old "titty up method" on our bed. Still not ideal but at least nights are free, and one can blog again... 

So here we are introducing Eleanor

Wow! So half a year has passed since the Pacs and my last post. I was very pregnant at the time and thankfully haven't been for a while. Since January 16th in fact, the due date, when my beautiful daughter Eleanor was born. She's just turned 5 months and I am completely besotted, and this blog may quickly become an online altar to her glory and education. Oh well.

Having had a nightmare pregnancy it only seemed fair that the birth should go well but that was alas not the case. Of course you want the nitty-gritty so allow me.

The contractions started on the evening of the 15th and I had a sleepless night of shifting and rolling, while Chook filled up empty plastic bottles with hot water for literal if not authentic hot water bottles. The previous few days I had tottered around, climbing stairs and doing the sales but it seems I have a punctual baby and around half past six on the 16th we called my dear friend Jaj who had offered to drive us to the maternity.

Once there, about 7AM, I saw a midwife who was just nearing the end of her shift and who hesitated about sending me home. I didn't want to, so suggested they plunge me into a hot bath instead which they did. Lovely and I dozed a bit. in my labour room I sat on the big bouncy ball a bit, walked around, even went for hot chocolate in the cafetria,crippled by contractions every few minutes. 

At 12, having casually shrugged it off earlier, I started yelling for epidural, which I got with many subsequent top-ups; very nice and I actually snoozed stonedily most of the afternoon.All this time my contractions were regular (though no longer painful thanks to the wonders of medecine) and strong, and all my and the baby's vitals were bleeping away merrily. But the baby wasn't coming down and I wasn't dilating.

This situation didn't change so by late afternoon, my lovely midwife Nina who had been following me for about ten hours at this point, decided to pierce the water pouch (my waters hadn't broken, a consequence of the baby not pushing down). That happened well out of sight and as much as possible out of imagination, and... nothing. Nina mentioned that at this rate I might have to start thinking about a caesarian. It was about half past six when I told Chook to go and get some newspapers; it looked like a long night.

Hardly five minutes after he had left, about half a dozen people came into the room. All the machines were bleeping crossly this time- the baby was in cardiac arrest and it was caesarian. NOW. It's a bit of a blur from then. I remember people asking me for Chook's phone number. Bloody hell i can barely remember it when I'm sober and calm. Luckily, he came back very quickly. I started to shake uncontrollably, which didn't stop for hours and was rushed to the operation room. I remember very little except for Chook being a star and taking my mind off things by asking me practical questions such as who to send texts to. A few minutes later (I think), they dumped a red squirming squid on my neck and I having said hello, I told them to take it the hell away. I vomited and passed out. Voilà, I was a mother.

I spent five days at the maternity and remember them as five days of warm and cosy paradise as outside it snowed horribly as Paris experienced its most horrible winter for years. I learnt to hold and wash and feed Eleanor, had a procession of family (my parents and mother-in-law, specially over from Thailand) and friends come through, spent cosy time with baby & Chook whio was sleeping on a chair and hardly left our sides. A wonderful team of midwives at the Maternité des Bluets took care of me and the other mothers.

Eleanor was born on the Wednesday and we left on Monday, with difficulty as no friends or ambulances wanted to risk the icy roads home. In the end we took a taxi and, without a car seat, it was the most nerve-wracking ride of my life as I clutched my tiny baby to me without a seatbelt.

We got home and in the blink of an eye, five months have passed. From

 to

So here we are drooling over cute baby stuff

You know that super annoying fad, where people bombard you with cute kitten stuff? Kitten yawning, kitten asleep in slipper, kitten falling off chair arm, kitten looking woozy? Well, it's really annoying. Which is why I'm only going to do it with cute baby stuff. Not cute babies, god no, how last season, but the clothes... I have to admit, I finally see what all the fuss is about. IT'S JUST ALL SO BLOODY CUTE. And expensive I might add, but will leave that rant for another post maybe.

There are two types of cute that I have identified so far. The cute because it's funny, and the cute because it's tiny (I'll probably have a heart attack due to overcuteness if both are combined).

Yesterday, Gorgeous Chook and I spent a fortune on the latter as we have to start thinking about putting the maternity bag together, and as Elspeth will arrive in the depths of winter (we hope) it has to be all warm and woolly and fluffy (more cuteness). So here are a couple of the cutest so far.



 Scale is important to grasp tiny- cuteness so here is our reference.

 Please note the bobble on the woolly hat. This is lovely and soft and will be hell to wash.

 This is as pink as it's going to get I hope, but the little feet were just to much to resist

  And my personal fave, possibly due to the late 19th century sleeping hat. The booties I can barely talk about without getting cuteness spasms.














Feeling sick yet? So, time to move on to that first category of cute which  maybe is more accessible to people who are not sobbing hormonally into little pairs of socks: yes, the novelty-funny cute.I spent an entertaining Friday evening on various websites, such as ThinkGeek and CafePress looking at little babygros and outfits that Elspeth, being her parents' daughter, might have. It sometimes takes a bit of understanding some major nerdy, geeky and gamer references to get the full humour, but most are accessible to the masses.

Funny slogans include "Tired? there's a nap for that", "QTπ", "I like formula (a² + b² = c²)", "my daddy can outcode your daddy"and a million references to role-playing games, WoW, physics, Star trek and wars, Fermat, Linux, Perl and co, etc etc. Well I think they're hilarious.

So, hint hint, if you were hesitating between that little pale pink Laura Ashley ensemble and the t-shirt emblazoned with "diaper downloading", there's one we definitely won't be returning to the shops.Or of course you could just go for the cute.

So here we are in the third trimester

Well, someone was in a good mood when they wrote that last post, eh? Well ,things are as always evolving, and I am now about six and a half months pregnant, with another ten weeks to go until wee sproglet (code name: Elspeth) is due. I've been taken off work by the gynecologist as what i thought were harmless Braxton-Hicks contractions mixed with indigestion were actually the real deal, with mademoiselle ready to pop out and brave the world: have been prescribed between 2 and 4 weeks in bed as a result. 

So, what's new so far this trimester?

A) Hugeness
On the plus side, people are nice: they notice, they stand up, they smile in the street, they pat you on the head and make friendly noises. On the down side, they have no issue with commenting on size and girth:  "Jesus, you're overdue aren't you??", "Bloody hell, are you expecting triplets??", or the rather simpler "Wow, you're fat". Well, guess what, actually I'm not. I started this pregnancy at 62 kgs (can't believe I've just made that figure official & public) and am now just under 70. Some people put on that kind of weight over the Xmas holidays for fuck's sake. The simple fact is that one rarely sees heavily heavily pregnant women, maybe because going out is a waddling, breathless pain in the arse. Anyway, for the record, this is what nearly 7 months pregnant looks like.

B) Constant peeing II
I mentioned this way back, but it really doesn't get better; my heart goes out to you guys with prostate issues. We're talking every 45 minutes here, maybe every couple of hours at night. My friend Amélie reckons this is nature's way of preparing me to the sleepless and interrupted nights Elspeth will be imposing in a few weeks, but that's pretty small comfort. What's particularly frustrating is that desperate need which turns out to be a pathetic little dribble. Loo roll consumption has gone through the roof, and an estimated 8 hours a day are spent on the throne. On the plus side, I'm getting a lot of reading done.

C) Appetite and nutrition    
So first three months were dedicated to puking, the following three to eating everything that couldn't run away fast enough, and these are all about moderation. Yup, Elspeth now takes up so much room (THIS IS NORMAL, I repeat) that the uterus is now where the stomach and liver should be. These two now have to squeeze into a small cavity between my boobs. The result is that a boiled egg and a small bowl of soup is enough to make one puke violently as poor old tummy just doesn't have the capacity to hold so much. Shame cos one is still pretty hungry and needs something like 2500 calories a day to keep Spawn happy and healthy and fatten her up. More to the point if I don't ingurgitate enough nutrients, babe will take them from me, i.e bones, teeth, internal organs and soon. I can imagine the result: "wow, you're huge and you've lost all your teeth and you're going bald!" Still waiting for this amazing pregnancy bloom people rave on about... Always eager to share lovely anecdotes with you, here's the latest to illustrate my point.

Was craving Indian on Sunday, so Gorgeous Chook and I headed off to our local (which luckily for us is amazing by Parisian standards, Comptoir des Indes). I ate frugally, half a portion of rice and some lovely spinach and paneer. Also drank a huge pot of tea which turned out to be a mistake. So lay down in bed, turned off light and gravity being gravity, Elspeth pushed against my stomach making everything come shooting out, green-geyser-style. The best way to describe would be this wonderful line by Stephen King in Different Seasons: "puke rumbled up his throat like a six-ton Peterbilt shooting through a tunnel." GC thought my waters had broken as "water" splashed merrily over, well,everything (I seriously hope my waters breaking will be less dramatic). Oops. Anyway, that lesson has been learnt, I now eat tiny portions frequently and pop anti-puke pills regularly. 

D) Being beaten up 
by something the size of a loaf of bread whatsmore! Typical, you spend months waiting for that first magic kick, that little flutter which is the first sign of life, and then very quickly you pray that she will grow so much she'll be unable to move, uncomfortably squashed. I didn't realise foetuses (foeti?) could be so bloody violent. It's in the evening that it's the most obvious: crash bang wallop especially after the evening "meal". A good thump every 3/4 minutes, with a special mention to her getting her feet tangled in my rib cage and trying to yank them out. It's pretty bad at night  too; in fact there's an inverse correlation between our levels of activity: the more relaxed I am, the more kung-fu she is. GC is of course ridiculoulsy proud.  

E) Libido
God, yes, it's true. Without going into detail, well, I'd shag the furniture. Twenty times a day. One wakes up in the night randy as hell. One wakes up with morning glory or female equivalent. Everyone/thing is incredibly sexy and attractive. Unfortunately because I'm threatened with premature labour I can't actually act on any of this, sex potentially leading to contractions And apparently it gets better (or worse, depends really doesn't it).

F) And luckily...
... So far I have avoided obesity (yes, I fucking well have you ignorant bastards), stretchmarks, hemorrhoids, blotchy skin, fur sprouting out of my nose/chin/ears and blowing a fortune on maternity clothes (my friends are wonderful). Not blowing a fortune on cute baby stuff however is going to be challenging, but hey, how can one resist???

 

So here we are in the second trimester

Well, it's true what they say. The second trimester is much less painful than the first. Exeunt morning sickness, crippling exhaustion and drooling. Welcome a nice rounded belly (people start to notice and make a fuss), no-guilt mega bingeing (perhaps linked to the former) and lots of energy. Of course there are days that are better than others, sometimes the sciatica plays up a bit, or nights cramps appear, and the constant need to pee hasn't really faded, but this is more than made up for by the fact that baby is now kicking a lot, floating around and reacting to food or state of relaxation. It's a simple negative correlation: the more relaxed I am, the more baby is awake and manifesting itself.

More recently (I'm getting to the end of the second term),  a few new uncomfortable symptoms have emerged, mostly linked with a huge gut (huuuge, I mean it). Bending over is impossible, sitting up is challenging, getting up is a painful, picking anything up is uncomfortable, getting wellies off a physical nightmare that ended with me marooned on the floor, on my back, with a trapped nerve. Walking slowly, going very easy up and down stairs... hello I feel 85 years old.

I will pass on the fact that no matter how big the clothes that some friends have given me are, everything is too small. Or are leggings. As it gets colder, one just has to wrap up in more and more layers. Thankfully i finish work in a week and can just start rolling around in jogging bottoms and huge t-shirts, like the awful people you read about in "take a break".

Maybe the newest symptom, which has only developed recently is being shit-terrified. Now that the baby is live and kicking and present and, let's face it, pretty much alive even if it pops out tomorrow, I'm beginning to realise that this is all very nice but fuck, I'm going to be a mother! there is so much to think about, from where we're going to stock all the baby's stuff (we live in a two room 30 sq. metre flat! and babies seem to need more clothes than I do), how we're going to handle those first sleepless, stressful, chaotic weeks, when we're going to buy all the stuff and what the hell i'm going to drink over the Xmas period.

We're also a few weks before the ante-natal classes, and as a result I have had the reality check before the father has which can be kind of frustrating. For example he thought we could get the furniture and so on about a month before delivery (Ikea 8,5 months pregnant anyone?). I don't think he realises how much there is to do and the kind of organisation that's going to be required! Apparently this is the norm for guys who basically get a reality check when the sprog pops out. Not much good for clearing out cupboards and so on beforehand though!

anyway, this latest symptom, which includes feeling a little bitter, cynical, weepy and pissed off is clearly not the nicest of the second term. Still ten more days to go and we'll be in the third... and last before arrival.

So here we are telling the truth II

2) Single neurone syndrome (SNS), or unique brain cell condition (UBCC)

Known more popularly as "where the fuck am I and why am I here?". This was something I was totally unaware of about pregnancy: your brain actually shrivels and doesn't work. In my case, it has gone down to the size of a largish walnut, and can do about as much. Not very practical on a day to day basis. So you go down to the shops to get something you desperately need and stare glumly at the shelves. Or you're talking to somebody and mid-sentence you suddenly have no idea why or where this was going ("Ah yes, the kitchen is on fire"). Or you stare sadly at the person behind the desk who has just asked for your phone number, or the name of your doctor, or yours for that matter. Filling in forms takes ages, which is a shame as the paperwork required to fill in when you're expecting a baby is endless. Having meaningful conversations is just too exhausting: you have to take notes. So, you get the idea. One's brain is like the end result of a chronic drug abuser's meeting an Alzheimer-riddled one on a hangover. Only slightly less sharp. This is also why the sentences I write on this blog are getting ever shorter. It's just too confusing to play with syntax.

3) Constant peeing

does not start when you have a huge belly/baby pressing down on your bladder. It starts when you have a minuscule bump and tiny baby pressing down on your bladder. The annoying thing is that even though you need to go every HOUR or so, you don't actually have much to evacuate. So now we are like a hungover Alzheimer suffering chronic drug abuser with a prostate problem.

4) Exhaustion

Not a word to be taken lightly. The lack of 8 shots of espresso a day doesn't help, but there are clearly other maleficient forces at play. It's not about being a little dozy or feeling tired cos it's been a long week. It's waking up in the morning, going to work, and realising as you get there at 9 AM that you feel like you've already done a full and difficult day. It's eating lunch and realising that it's bedtime because your body has just retired for the day. It's sitting down to watch the news and waking up 3 hours later. Movements and speech slow down, instinctive reflexes disappear. Yawning becomes rampant. Again, so practical when your job is based on teaching people 6 hours a day. Doing simple things like going up and down stairs, carrying a bit of shopping, commuting and remembering the day of the week (SNS!) triggers the need to crawl around in a circle and settle down for the night. Still, it's pretty good to have an excuse to sleep about 11 hours a day as there probably won't be a lot of that in a few months. maybe i'll look back on this in 6 months or so and laugh bitterly, as the true definition of exhaustion willhave hit me in a whirl of night feeds and nappies. I'll keep you posted... 

So here we are telling the truth

Of course every women is different. That's the only thing all these different women can agree on. And this of course applies to pregnancy so, reader, be aware that within these pages you shall find only my experiences, no more no less. if you are expecting I can only hope that this is alien to you. If not, then you've been warned...

Also, this is written in no particular order (except maybe the most horrible painful spring to mind first).

1) Morning sickness.

Bullshit. Morning? Unless morning lasts 6 weeks and counting I'm not sure I get. So at first you feel fine. In fact you feel exactly the same as usual: you fancy nicotine and alcohol and coffee and food, preferably consumed together. Then one day you look at some pleasant ravioli in the fridge and hurl. Appetite disappears. Every smell (which is magnified to its millionth power) pulls on some long fragile cable that suspends the stomach and makes the guts wobble. The mildewy smell under the sink, the fresh paint, the cigarette smoke, the shower gel, the grilled sausages, candle wax, cooked spinach... everything sets off drool and retching.

Morning sickness set in around week 6, that's about 4 weeks after conception (just because). Chicken nuggets started it off. I really felt like some (I usually won't touch them) so microwaved some frozen at work. Big mistake. After that I could just about chew anything very bland but not swallow. The thought of anything made me feel horrible and perversely, the less you eat, the more the juices flow and the shittier you feel. The doctor, a.k.a Hitler, suggested 6 to 8 small meals a day, which apart from being physically impossible was not pratical. i spend around 6 hours a day in the company of students, teaching them English in a small training room or in their office. Not the right time to start making and eating ham sandwiches and washing apples.

The worst experience came on May 23rd, in a fashionable new restaurant in the 9th. Light, fresh, 3 course menu with wonderful ingredients and a real twist on classics. Cold fennel soup with vanilla and grilled almonds, tranluscent cod on a bed of bright green parsley puree. YUCK!! never has anything been so fragrant and creamy and sweet and green. I can't even remember dessert, I think I spent all evening in the loo.

One day things get better. you wake up  without a cannon ball on your chest. Immediate panic of course because you think you've lost the baby, but no fear, the nausea does come back, in unexpected waves and at odd times, in the night, or in the metro, in the middle of a pronunciation exercise or in the middle of (a light) lunch.

The worst occured of course while teaching. I have many students, though I see most for only a week when they come for an intensive 42-hour course at the school. Others I have scattered in companies and extensive lessons, and I see them every fortnight or so in their office or at the school. General H. is one of the latter. A consultant for France's major defense company, he is a retired general and has seen a lot of battle, negociated extremely tricky situations and is basically a living history book ("War : 1970-2012"). He is also a pleasant, fluffy and dignified old chap, friendly and clearly rather conservative. I was feeling ok and was confident that my lesson would go well with Uncle H. We were at the annex, a small office a few streets away from the main school. It's in an old parisian building, and it has rooms leading off a very long and winding corridor; We were as far away from the loo as possible. Mid-lesson I felt the familiar symptoms (rising drool, need to sneeze, stomach churning battery acid) and excused myself, running down the endless corridor. Into the tiny loo and found relief, not with a gentle plop you understand but with a coughing, hacking, burping opera of empty stomach and hormones. Eventually I got up, red, tears streaming down my face and realised that the tiny window was open and that the concert had been echoing around the silent courtyard, straight into my classroom. When I got back, I understood that he thought I was drunk of  hungover, so I told him the truth and he was delighted for me. That's the plus side. It's horrible but everyone is very nice.

Today I feel fine in the mornings but feel very sick in the afternoons, whether I eat, lightly, or not. There are good days and bad, and the saying that the sickness disappears at 12 weeks is certainly not applicable in my case. Things are better and I can face food. But not all of them all the time, and not sometimes not at all. To be fair, sometimes i can also eat like a monster.

So, at 14 weeks pregnant, i'm hoping that things will have settled before long. it wold be nice to gorge this summer after all.

        

So here we are making it official

Gorgeous Chook and I are expecting a baby! or whatever the combination of our gene pools can muster. So far so good. I'm around three and a half months pregnant and apart from an extremely drunken family wedding and boozy holiday in the UK I've been pretty good (define good). Scans, blood tests and the rest indicate all's normal. So! the baby is due around mid January 2013.

That's the nice part. Now let's talk about uncontrollable farting, shall we?