Fabulous Friday

Happy Fabulous Friday! Today marks the end of the first week Sticky and I have been by ourselves. Today is only half way through but I feel confident enough to say we kicked it!

Flying solo

This is Sticky's and mine first week together. My husband has gone back to work and now it's just us girls. I hate to say it but 3 days in I'm bored out of my brains desperately willing Sticky to grow quickly so she can entertain me!

The brutal reality of Motherhood

In all the times I visioned myself as a Mother, not once did I see myself sitting in a gutter trying to breastfeed a hysterical baby on a busy street. Mind you, I also never saw myself freaking out that my baby had suffocated or dropping them in the bath but reality is different to fantasy.

Fabulous Friday

Happy Fabulous Friday all! I hope you've all had a great week. I don't know about you but this week has flown by. Mind you, that seems to happen every week now. But, what's fabulous about this week was butterfly kisses!

Wonder Week #1 and wine

I have a sneaky suspicion Sticky has entered her first Wonder Week. She seems to be growing before my eyes and has become quite grizzly and unsettled. This is the first of many Wonder Weeks we are going to experience over the next two years. However, I was saved by my first leave pass today so made the most of it by catching up with a good friend and indulging in a glass of wine!

For those who have never heard of the term Wonder Weeks, it's basically a predictable time when babies go through mental changes. You can find more information about it here. Basically, it outlines the changes babies will go through each Wonder week. As each change occurs, the length of time increases and the effect does too. It seems Sticky has hit her first week.

She is showing all the classic signs including an increase in metabolism, wanting to feed more often, grizzling for no real reason, being much more alert hearing and responding more, and just wanting to be held. She is also showing tears for the first time. I didn't know newborns didn't cry tears from day one so seeing them for the first time has created an emotional response from me. Hearing her cry out quite hysterically at times was bad enough, however, when I go to pick her up and see her eyes glistening it breaks my heart even more.

It's going to be a tough week so I wasn't sure if I should take my leave pass today. My husband told me to do it before he goes back to work. I didn't feel totally comfortable with it but knew I had to take some time for myself. I had lunch with a friend and treated myself to a glass of wine. I had a lovely few hours out and Sticky didn't know any different. I had made sure I had some expressed milk for my husband to give her and he was feeding her when I got home. I felt relieved to know it had gone ok. Sadly, the rest of the afternoon didn't.

She started screaming so much on our walk this afternoon I had to take her out of the pram and hold her. Holding her and pushing the pram at the same time was too difficult so I had to call my husband to come and help me. She fell asleep in his arms and we went to put her to bed when we got home. She woke up and couldn't resettle so we bathed and fed her and started again. We got home from the walk at 6pm and finally got her settled and asleep at 8:30. It's definitely going to be a tough week!

I'm so glad my husband is home with me this week to help me through this. I know the first one will be the hardest to deal with as the first one. Mind you the others will be longer and harder but hopefully we'll become better at handling it. So far we're doing pretty well but I must admit, the wine helped! I just have to make sure I don't handle it by having a wine everyday. I think I'll substitute it for chocolate instead! 

Time slipping away

Sticky was four weeks old yesterday. I can't believe how quickly that time has gone. In a blink of an eye she will be six years old, heading off to school. I must remind myself to make the most of every moment I have because the sand is most definitely slipping through the hourglass.

Fabulous Friday

Happy Fabulous Friday and Happy Valentines Day to you all. What's fabulous about today is of course love - having love, being in love and the amazing things we do for love!

Rookie Mummy mistake

There's an old saying - "When the student is ready the teacher will appear." Well, it turns out I am the student and my daughter is the teacher. Today, she taught me to be prepared, never assume she will be predictable and not to be over confident. These lessons were the result of some rookie mistakes!

Devoted Daddy

I knew having a baby would change my relationship with my husband. I expected the exhaustion and stress to strain our relationship but instead it's strengthened it. I shouldn't have underestimated the power of the Devoted Daddy.

Surviving cluster feeding

I'd never heard of cluster feeding until I was in hospital. There was one evening when Sticky wouldn't stop screaming and one of the midwives said she was cluster feeding. Basically it means babies feed and feed regularly and it's hell!

Fabulous Friday

Happy Fabulous Friday to you. I cannot believe we are at Friday again already. It seems my life has entered warp speed since becoming a mother. Time is flashing before me which is also a good thing. It's actually a fabulous thing because come Sunday, I've been doing this mother gig for 3 weeks and I'm finally starting to feel confident in what I'm doing.

Plight of the sleepy baby

I would never dare complain about having a sleepy baby for fear of the slap down I'd get from all the parents who don't have a sleepy bay. But, I feel I must share the plight of the sleepy baby in the hope their unique needs and challenges can be understood.

First off, let me be clear that I am not complaining about having a sleepy baby - I know how lucky I am and I am grateful. However, it does pose its own challenges that need to be overcome. I'm not sure why Sticky is a sleepy baby. Perhaps it's the jaundice she was born with, or the fact she's so small (born 5 pound 14) or it could just be she's like her Mum and likes her sleep. Or, it could be a combination of all these things. 

I find the greatest challenge with a sleep baby is keeping her awake to feed. Each feed takes approximately one hour so in a 24 hour period, I am feeding 6 to 7 hours a day. Add onto that another hour for expressing milk and my breasts see quite a lot of daylight. The reason each feed  is so long is because I have to keep waking her up through the process. I need to switch between each breast several times and regularly burp her in an effort to wake her up. Even after an hour, she will often still be hungry and I will need to give her formula as a top up. If I didn't, I would probably find myself sitting in my feeding chair all day long.

I've had several comments from other mothers who are shocked to hear I feed for an hour. I'm not sure if they take pleasure in telling me that they only feed for 10 minutes or not, but it seems pretty unhelpful when they do. They might be lucky to have babies that are vigorous feeders, not the sleepy baby that needs more attention.

As a new parent, you can be bombarded by the amount of information and so called experts and sources that tell you demand feeding is the way to go. Demand feeding is basically letting the baby tell you when they are hungry and then feeding them at that time. The problem with a sleepy baby is they don't wake up to tell you they are hungry so you have to wake them up to feed them. There is ongoing debate about how often you should feed the baby whether that is every two or three hours or somewhere in between. I've tried waking Sticky up earlier than three hours but she is so exhausted she simply refuses to feed. I found there's no point in trying to feed her when she is so exhausted so I let her sleep and stick with 3 hourly feeds during the day and 4 to 5 hourly feeds at night. 

On average, Sticky  sleeps for about 14 hours a day. On a good night, I get 6 hours sleep in 2, 3 hour stints. If she is unsettled or has an upset tummy, I'm lucky if I get 3 to 4 hours sleep. My ultimate goal, is to have her sleeping through the night by 8 weeks. I'm gradually working towards that over the next few weeks but given she's only 2.5 weeks old we have a little while to go. But the work needs to be done now to achieve that in a few weeks time.

I can't comment on what it is like to have a baby that doesn't sleep very well, but I can imagine how difficult it would be. On the nights she's awake for 5 hours straight and we can't settle her, my heart aches for her and me in dealing with those situations. I'm very lucky that doesn't happen too often.

So many people use sleep as an indication as to whether you have a good baby or not. For some reason, they decide that sleep will determine what classification your child receives - good or bad. I am under no illusions that Sticky's current sleep patterns could change at any time. While she might sleep now, I'm sure that will change when she starts hitting growth spurts, teething and the range of other things she will experience that will disrupt her sleep patterns. But, I don't let any of that cloud my opinion of her. Like me, she has days were she feels good and others where she's under par. She has nights where she sleeps peacefully and others she's unsettled. 

None of that matters to me because we are all blessed with the child we receive and each child will have their own challenges. She is a fabulous and beautiful baby whether she sleeps or not just because she is who she is and she is mine! 

Perfect Mother Syndrome

This morning I realised I was suffering from PMS - perfect mother syndrome. As the saying goes, there's no way to be a perfect Mother but a million ways to be a good one!