What to do in a hostage situation

Write a blog post. (It'll make sense later.)

I'm in Happy One's room giving him his bedtime feed and thought why not put this time to good use and do a quick blog post.

Actually the truth is that Happy One is practically asleep but I'm hiding because I can hear ructions coming from the other room, Miss Chief crying and doors slamming, and I'm trying to avoid either getting involved or being dragged into putting her to bed. This I don't mind in and of itself but by the sounds of things it could take a while and be a bit of a mish.

The thing is that this is a bit of a crazy house at the moment. I went back to work a couple of months ago and a few weeks prior to that Map Man started a full- time 6 month coursework-based post-grad course. He's writing a paper about 'las-ers', cluster computing and finding tall trees. Pretty cool stuff but not really an appropriate subject for this blog.

Miss Chief has been having various sleep issues over the same time period and longer. The latest is that she still occasionally loses the plot at bedtime and often finds it incredibly hard to wind down. But more pertinent is that once asleep she then wakes frequently and gets out of bed. This is happening almost every night and is often after we've gone to bed. She'll wander into our room and wake us up. When we bring her back to her own room she says "but I'll be all by myself". (I hope this isn't all my fault for having a "sleepover" in my bed one night whilst Toby was away - he told me this would happen. It may well have contributed but I don't think it's a direct cause.)

At the same time she is continuing to amaze us with her wit, comprehension, vocabulary, creativity and imagination. Her development in these areas, and more, just isn't slowing. I reckon I'd have trouble sleeping if I had all that going on in my head.

Meanwhile Happy One is just a baby, 9 months old and dealing with all the usual stuff that the little critters have to deal with. The odd Wonder Week here and there. (We made it through Week 36 World of Categories (a horse can be an animal in a field or a picture in a book and is not the same as a large dog) and now we've got Week 44 World of Sequences (put spoon in bowl, scoop cereal onto spoon, move spoon to mouth, open mouth ... and so on, you get the drift) starting this week at 41 weeks.) And all the amazing milestones they bring: he's crawling, cruising round the furniture, standing by himself, playing peekaboo, picking up ever smaller morsels and working on his pincer grip, chatting away in his baby talk, sort of signing, he even clapped his hands but it was a bit of a "blink and you miss it" moment. He's incredibly funny, loves to copy Miss Chief, laughs a lot, gets annoyed if he has to wait too long for a breastfeed or if you take something from him, loves his food, and is generally a lot of fun to be around. He is also getting massive. I bought him a little hoodie for when the weather cools down today. It suggested size 0 for a 10kg baby. He is a little bit under that but I picked up the next size up anyway and was surprised that it fit him. It's a little large but not overly so.

When he's not having a major mental leap or a growth spurt, he's teething. He's not a great teether. He goes off his food and wants extra breastfeeds. Yay for me. (I love breastfeeding but not all the time.) He has 6 teeth now and we're in a teething break which is good. He still loves his sleep but sleep training has gone to poo. I still breastfeed him to sleep at night and when he's not teething he wakes once for a feed around 3 or 4am. During the day we have varying degrees of success in getting him to sleep but it pretty much always results in doing the Cot Dance - pacing round his room with him in our arms, rocking and jiggling him slightly then gradually lowering him into the cot and trying to get our arms out from under him without waking him. I'm going to design a new mother and baby exercise class based upon it. Watch this space.

The thing is at the moment it's all about maximising sleep in this house. Let's worry about bad habits later when things are less crazy. To that end my next step with The Chief is to replace her toddler bed with a single bed. I have a base. I just need to paint it (it's black) and buy a mattress. I would just let her sleep in our bed when she wakes up but Map Man can't sleep with her in the bed. I figure if she has a bigger bed one of us can either get in with her or swap.

As for me, because surely someone cares how I'm doing, right? Oh good. Well I'm finding it hard to find time to exercise. I do the occasional Zumba workout if I get up before the kids (ha!) or get them both sleeping at the same time (Chief sleeps about every other day now). Sometimes I get to the pool but that's rare. And I had my bike serviced the other week so I could ride to work. Which I've done once. Basically I'm still establishing a routine.

I'm enjoying being back at work. I don't really know where I'm heading with that but it's good to be contributing and feeling like a normal grown up a couple of days a week. A part time working mother is a bit like a person with multiple personality syndrome. It can be hard to switch between the two roles. I often go to work with rusks and spare undies (size 3) in my handbag. But I work really close to the beach and only 5 minutes drive from home in swanky new offices. I feed Happy One once a
day before his lunchtime sleep while Map Man swims in the ocean. Tomorrow if the weather isn't too bad then we're trying a new routine of meeting at the pool. Map Man will swim whilst I feed Happy One and then I'll do some laps. I haven't really been taking all the breaks I'm entitled to as I've been settling back in but I think I'm starting to find my rhythm now. We're hoping to get Happy One into daycare one day a week soon. That'll be interesting as he won't get his daytime feed (he gets 2 on a non workday). As it is he's all over me as soon as I walk through the door and won't leave me alone until I feed him.

[Update: now I'm in Chief's room massaging her feet while she (hopefully, please soon) falls asleep. How did this happen? It's very hard - and slow - typing with left hand while massaging with right (or vice versa for that matter). A bit like patting your head and rubbing your tummy. I keep getting the two mixed up. Chief's a bit perturbed but my iPhone seems nice and relaxed. At least I had the presence of mind to bring my wine in too.]

Ok where was I? Oh that's right. Me. So yeah. Work good. Two days perfect for now. Breastfeeding and working still not easy but pretty good really. Aside from that I've been baking a lot and getting fat (compared to my wedding photos anyway). And as soon as I get out of here (Chief's room. Currently hostage.) I'm going to sew Alvin's arms on (soft toy I'm making for my nephew's birthday. Which was last week. Yeah. I'm so on the ball and organised.)

Just for fun (and because I'm still captive) I'll close with a summary of Happy One's routine at 9 months. It's very flexible.

3-4am : breastfeed. Takes about 15-20 mins. Unless I fall asleep.
6am : wake
7am : breakfast.
8am : breastfeed
8.30 : sleep for about an hour
11am : breastfeed
12pm : lunch
1pm : sleep for 1.5-2 hours
3pm : breastfeed
5pm : bathtime
5.30 : dinner (usually followed by another quick dunk in the bath)
6.30 : breastfeed
7.00 : sleep

I've no idea whether this is normal. Most 9 month olds are probably down to 3 milk feeds a day but I don't care. If there's one thing I learnt when Chief was a baby it's not to stress about weaning. It'll happen when the time is right. Obviously work days are a bit different. I feed him before I leave. Then around 1130-12ish and again around 5 or 6pm depending on when I get home. He also gets offered morning and afternoon tea if he's awake when Chief has hers. In short he spends about 70% of his waking hours eating or drinking.

Sheesh this is a long post. No one's going to read this far. I could say anything now and no one would ever know.

[And I'm still massaging 3-year old feet. Or feets as Chief would say.]

My So Called Life

Just once I would like to sleep in until 7am and then get up to enjoy a relaxing breakfast with my children and husband and a hot cup of coffee.

Instead if I'm lucky enough to sleep in until 7 I rise to a tired and hungry baby who wonders where I've been for the last three hours. My cereal goes soggy as I either feed the baby, or make my sandwiches, or get the Chief a drink, or change a dirty nappy. If I'm lucky enough to get a cup of coffee I might grab a sip before I have to take The Bairn to bed. And often the only time Wee Bairn isn't also known as The Happy One is when he's tired. So I can be there for a while consoling and cajoling my little midget and jiggling him to sleep. Then my coffee is cold. And before I know it, if it's a daycare day for Chief, or a work day for me, one or the other of us has to leave the house. And I've barely spent two minutes with her.

And at which point in my life did 7am become a sleep in anyway? I remember the days when I'd walk home from a night club at that time, having danced the entire night to awesome DJs like The Chemical Brothers, Judge Jools and FatBoy Slim. Now the only dancing I get to do is at home in the middle of the afternoon to The Wiggles and Justine Clarke, with a baby in my arms and a pre-schooler at my feet.

Oh how things change. Those of you who knew me Before Children will know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm still the same old me, only I now turn down the opportunity to go to a Full Moon Dance on a rare occasion we have babysitters in town, in favour of just grabbing a walk or a coffee with Other Half so we can actually spend some time talking to one another. Not that I don't want to go dancing. I really really do. I mean really. But I'm so tired I just can't be bothered to get all dressed up and then spend another night not talking to OH about how the hell we're going to get the Chief to go to sleep before 8.30pm every night. I just want to get out of the house as soon as Bairn is asleep and let someone else stress over whether Chief is awake or getting enough sleep or not. I'll probably regret not going, and maybe I'll change my mind. But I doubt it. Full moons happen once a month, right? Next time, then.

Meanwhile I'm going to have the Valentine's evening we never had (because it's all about the Chief in our house now) and an early night where I dream that when I wake up in the morning (no earlier than 7) to the smell of freshly brewed coffee I will go to the dining room to find well rested, happy children eating their breakfast. And I'll sit down and join them with my crunchy cereal and hot coffee and we'll plan our day together.

Sleep training, EASY routine and first solids

My beautiful boy is five months old today and finally I have something interesting to write about him. Unfortunately I don't have the time to write it. So in brief (ha! as if I can say anything in brief):

• he now has two teeth, 
• is almost sitting unaided,
• travels around the floor extensively by twisting and rolling,
• sits in the highchair whilst we're having dinner,
• has tried an array of solids, including rice cereal, avocado, mango and roast dinner (more on this later),
• and is being sleep trained.

Yes, I got a bit fed up of the snacking and catnapping, frequent night wakings and 3am parties so I pulled out my good old Baby Whisperer (Tracy Hogg) books, specifically The Baby Whisperer Solves All Your Problems. It was a life saver with Phoebe and I'm hoping it'll be the same with Ash. Rather than try to figure out what was causing the various problems I decided I had to get him onto Tracy's EASY (Eat, Activity, Sleep, Your time) routine and teach him how to fall asleep in his cot. Up until then I'd been jiggling him, which meant swaddling him, putting him in the sling and then bouncing on the bed or the fitball. Seriously, parents of young babies are ridiculous.

Until about a week ago Asher was only pooing once every four or five days and sometimes he would seem a bit uncomfortable with it. Last Monday it had been so long since he'd pooed that I couldn't even remember when it was. Then lo and behold, he did the hugest poo ever (which fascinated Phoebe so much she stood at the end of the change table watching and providing a running commentary) and has pooed at least once a day all but one day since. I never thought I'd be happy to have a baby who poos every day, but there you go. I am getting a bit over rinsing all the nappies though, especially as Phoebe keeps having little accidents in her knickers too. We had four today in a 3 hour outing to the beach. I was somewhat fed up by the end of it.

By Friday I was happy that he wasn't constipated nor did he have a runny nose or a cough, plus I'd read enough of the book to start implementing some techniques. I started to put him down in the portacot in his own room, which now has a black-out blind, for his daytime naps. I have him on a four hour EASY routine, the timing of which always depends on when he gets up for the day. The easiest way to keep him in this routine is to put him to sleep two hours after he last woke up, give him about 20 minutes of quiet time to wind down before sleep time, go in and re-settle him if he wakes after 45 minutes so that he has about 1 1/2 - 2 hours of sleep. Then feed him when he wakes up. Bedtime is generally easy and always has been. He tends to fall asleep at the breast. But daytime naps were getting harder and harder. I use the Baby Whisperer Pick Up, Put Down technique and patting to get him to sleep. I still wrap him but realise I should probably stop that now, especially as the other day he woke himself up by rolling onto his tummy. Thankfully his arms had escaped the wrap. I have to hold his legs down whilst I'm patting him because they go crazy and disturb him. He's so active at the moment.

Pick up, put down basically entails picking up your baby, if he's crying, and cuddling him (I pat his back too) until he stops, then putting him straight back in his cot. Tracy also recommends limiting the time you hold him for and decreasing this as he gets older. So a baby Ash's age shouldn't be held for longer than 4 or 5 minutes. If he's still crying I just put him down and then pick him straight back up again. Most of the time he's just in his cot and I'm patting him though because he seems to have more of a wind-down cry than a worked up cry. That's his nature though. He's such a happy chilled out boy.

It's early days so I'm not sure yet if it's working but his wake up times are getting later and we've only had one 2am party since starting and that lasted one hour rather than two. (A "party" by the way is where Ash is apparently wide awake in the middle of the night and babbling away. I generally just leave him in his cot until he gets upset then try to settle him. I think these will bother me less once he moves to his own room. Which is on the agenda to happen soon.) Most days he seems more settled. I've been dream-feeding him around 10 or 11 at night and mostly he's only woken once since then but is then up for the day around 5-5.30. Previously he was waking at 4am and not really going back to sleep. I'd try for a while, then Toby would either take over or get up with him at 5am, then bring him back to me at 7am for a feed and a nap. That's all changed. Last night he woke up twice after his dream feed but he had a good feed and went back to sleep both times. The last feed was at 4am which meant he wasn't hungry when he woke at 6.30. That kind of put his routine out a bit but not too badly. Hopefully this will soon result in more sleep for me.

There are a few challenges with this however. Firstly, the dream feed. Most nights, like tonight, staying up until 10am is a bit exhausting but I can't feed him much earlier as it's too soon after his bedtime feed. So sometimes I go to bed early and set my alarm for 11ish. I don't know whether the chopping and changing of times of this feed is confusing for him.

Secondly, the morning nap is a right pain in the proverbial. I wasn't a fan of the 5am starts but then I wasn't the one getting up with him and I actually got quite a nice nap between 5 and 7. Then his morning nap was over by 9am and we could get up and out for the day after that. Now, I find we're rushing around trying to get out of the house by 8 or 8.30 depending on when he's due for a sleep, so that he can sleep in his car seat/pram and we can still get out and do things and make appointments. Otherwise I'd have to put him down then wake him. Or we'd get stuck in the house until 10 or 11am. Which is no good when Phoebe has a swimming lesson at 10am, for example.

There's a little more to it but that's it in a nutshell. It's still a work in progress but watch this space

As for food, it's fair to say I'm still a fan of baby-led weaning. I tried a bit of mushy stuff with Ash. I don't really know why. I think I felt conflicted. For some reason I thought I should be trying him on solids but I knew he wasn't ready. I know that's not why he was waking in the night as he was sucking a bit then falling back to sleep. He couldn't sit up unaided, couldn't feed himself. All the signs I use that a baby is ready. And he really wasn't too impressed with the whole rice cereal thing. Can't blame him. It's so bland. Most of it came straight back out of his mouth. He was a bit better when I fed him a bit of avocado. But in the last few days he's got better at sitting and his hand-mouth coordination has improved significantly. So when we sat down to a roast dinner on Sunday, and I hadn't prepared any food for him, I started giving him bits and pieces. He had zucchini (corgette), carrot, broccoli (which went straight onto the floor) and lamb. I doubt he ate much but then he wasn't eating much anyway. At least this way he was improving his motor skills, had control over what he was putting into his mouth, seemed to be enjoying it and I could enjoy my dinner too. So, pureeing definitely isn't for us. It's time-consuming for me in terms of preparation and actually feeding it too him, and far less fun for him.

Well, I've a lot more to talk about and about a million more posts in my head but I'm tired and hungry so I'm off for a quick snack and then bed. Just need to figure out when I'm going to do this dream feed. And when exactly is this so called dream feed going to stop him from waking every three hours after it? If it doesn't work soon I'm going to give it up as a dumb idea.

Phoebe and Asher: Compare and contrast

I really would like to write more about Asher but Phoebe just gives me so much material. The funniest thing Ash does is to grab whatever soft thing is nearest to him, be it a toy, a cloth or his sleepsuit, and smother his face with it, seemingly trying to eat it. And he gets very excited about his bath. Bathtime used to calm him down and totally relax him. Now he seems to be trying to beat his personal best for how much water he can get on the floor. Oh and he just loves to stand up. He thinks he's so cool. And I suppose that is pretty impressive given he's not yet 17 weeks old.

Meanwhile, as I'm bathing Ash I can hear Phoebe playing with her Barbie in the bath and saying "I'm the teacher. I'm the teacher. I'm the teacher.... I'm here. I'm Barbie." And muttering nonsense to herself. At times she is just so incredibly cute. Like when I went to say goodnight to her and she gave me a big hug and said "I love you too darlin'" over and over again. And then "Your earrings, darlin'. Your earrings, darlin'. Your earrings, darlin'" as she played with my earrings. Until eventually I said, "Phoebe, stop playing with my earrings now please" and she said, "Ok" and stopped. Just like that. And then at other times she's just totally mental and incredibly frustrating.

I read back over some old posts to see what Phoebe was like at Asher's age. At first I didn't quite know what to make of them. On the one hand I seemed to know a lot more about babies and what they were supposed to be doing. And on the other I seemed a little bit more stressed about the fact that she wasn't doing what she should be and that she kept changing. I seem to remember thinking that she was an easier baby as she had more of a routine but Ash is definitely getting into a routine now. He seems to wake a bit more at night and feed more during the day than I remember Phoebe doing. But then reading the old posts it seems that Phoebe started to sleep through around 10 weeks and then stopped again a few weeks later. She'd feed approximately every three hours but then would cluster at certain times of the day. When Ash was tiny he seemed to cry more than Phoebe, be more awake at night and he still seems to wake up earlier. But then the two occasions that Phoebe's inconsolable crying really impacted my social life and have stuck in my head may well be the only two occasions as it seems I blogged about them.

One thing I can say is that I have less time to worry too much about what Ash is doing. I don't have as many friends with babies of the same age to compare behaviours with. I also have the benefit of my experience with Phoebe of knowing what worked for us then and what didn't and not even bothering with the stuff that didn't work. Plus being told that everything is a phase and learning that that's the case from experience are two different things.

So with all that in mind I thought it might be useful to pick a few key points from a post I wrote when Phoebe was about a week older than Ash is now and see how the two compare.

• "Little Miss P has changed so much over the last 4 weeks." So has Ash.
• "Just in the last few days she has taken to sucking her bottom lip (teething, perhaps?) and it totally changes the look of her face." Ash has started gurning like an old man. I remember Phoebe doing this too.
• "She cries less and is more vocal, shouting when she's a bit annoyed about something." Ash has been doing that for a while now.
• "About two weeks ago at Gymbaroo she rolled by herself down the soft play wedge and has since rolled quite a few times, including onto her back during mat time at Gymbaroo when she got fed up with being on her tummy." Ash is rolling onto his side both from his back and his tummy although he hasn't quite rolled over completely yet. He does wriggle around a lot though. It still amazes me how much babies can travel just by wriggling.
• "She has also started to commando crawl although doesn't go very far and gets tired easily." No commando crawling here unless I put my hands to his feet to give him something to push off.
• "As well as continuing with her standing fetish, she is now learning to sit and is getting pretty good at doing it on her own....She can stay still for a few seconds but then she topples over, which she seems to think is great fun. If she's holding onto something, such as my finger or a toy then she can balance for much longer." Ash also loves to stand and sits whilst holding onto both of my fingers although I really have to hold onto him. It seems as though he has the strength in his upper back but not so much his lower abs.
• "She seems to be over her fear of going to bed." No fear of bed with Ash. He bloody loves it. Phoebe, on the other hand, is a different story some nights.
• Phoebe had recently changed from falling asleep after her feed, or talking herself to sleep, or having to be jiggled to sleep to wanting to fall asleep on the breast. If I pulled her away from the breast she would wake up, cry and root around. It was taking me an hour to get her to bed. In contrast Ash usually falls asleep at the breast quite quickly although tonight I had to give him a quick cuddle afterwards. I quite enjoy that last feed. He doesn't seem to mind falling asleep with the light on so I put the radio on tuned out (to drown out the noise of Miss Chief having her bedtime tantrum) and take the opportunity to read my book. If the light seems to be bothering him then I turn to the iPhone.
• "Phoebe still sometimes wakes up in the night. She usually wakes when I go to bed or around midnight and then again at about 5.30am but this varies." Hmm... Ash always wakes in the night, usually at least twice. And he often wakes up at 5.30am or earlier. I read that Phoebe would wake at 6am for a feed, change and quick play then go back to bed for 2-3 hours. Ash wakes anywhere between 4am (hasn't done that for a while, thank god) and 6 or 7, stays awake for a couple of hours then goes back to bed for 1-2 hours. Only I don't get to go back to bed with him like I used to with Phoebe because by then Phoebe is up. 
• "Last night she went to bed around 7.30 then woke at 10.30pm when I went to bed and again at 3.30am and then 6.30am when we all got up." That sounds more like Ash. So maybe he's not that different after all.
• "I'm not at all used to all this night-time activity so I'm a bit tired and I'm off to bed in a minute." I am but I'm still tired and off to bed in a minute.
• "I've given up trying to make her nap in the middle of the day. I just let her sleep when she's tired and hope that it fits in with what I'm doing." That's pretty much always been the case with Ash. These days I like him to have one or two of his naps in his cot but he also sleeps quite well in his car seat on the pram base. I aim to get him to sleep about two hours after he last woke up. I swaddle him in a muslin cloth during the day and at night he has this kick-arse sleep suit that keeps him all snug but lets his arms go up either side of his head and he can still suck on his hands (through the suit). During the day when we're at home I generally have to put him in the sling so that I can block out visual stimulation and then jiggle him for a bit. Since Phoebe was a baby we have bought a new (second-hand) Ikea chair which is so comfortable. I sit in that for a bit to make sure he's asleep before putting him in his cot. More often than not I doze off too.

It was interesting to read those old posts and see just how similar they are, and in what ways they were different. It seems that aside from the waking at night, and the stupidly early mornings, that Ash is the easier baby. It certainly sounds like he's easier to put to bed at night. But I really do remember Phoebe being easy too. My expectations may be different this time. And of course I'm totally distracted by my toddler.

Phoebe gets ready for work

The other morning Toby was in the kitchen packing Phoebe's daycare bag. I was in the en-suite doing my hair and make-up. Phoebe took one of my handbags from the cupboard and threw it over her shoulder. She took a basket full of buttons and put that on her other shoulder. She marched into the kitchen.

"Kiss," she said to Toby, and puckered up.

He bent down and gave her a kiss. She pushed the handbag further onto her shoulder.

"Bye bye," she said, waved at him and trotted off to the en-suite.

"Kiss," she said to me.

I gave her a kiss.

"Bye bye," she said, waved and left the room.

I don't know where she gets it from.

Weaning: done!

Why have booby milk when there's chocolate ice cream?

I thought I'd give a quick update on the whole weaning thing.

In my last post, almost three weeks ago, I reported that it had been 45 hours since I last breastfed Phoebe, and pondered whether I'd ever do it again.

Well, I haven't. It's quite amazing. I haven't offered and she hasn't asked. Well, a few times she's made her milky sign but she's been quite happy with a cuddle, or a cup of milk, or a story, or snack. The time was obviously just right for both of us. In fact, dropping the last feed was much easier than dropping the morning feed.

I bought Phoebe a new no-spill sippy cup the other day and she now has a cup of milk at breakfast and supper. She also takes milk to daycare for afternoon tea.

For a week or two after we stopped feeding I didn't bath with Phoebe. I didn't want her to launch herself upon my naked boobies. A few nights ago we had our first bath together since stopping. She was interested in my boobs but not overly so. She cuddled and kissed them but didn't try to feed. It was as though she could sort of remember a relationship with them but not the details. Funnily, she also kissed Toby's nipples when she was in the bath with him. Funny girl.

So that's that and I have to say I'm amazed. There have been so many times that I've stressed about dropping a feed and at the end of last year I was really worried about whether I should try and wean before I returned to work. Then, after weaning all but two feeds, things seemed to stretch out for so long I worried that she'd be breastfeeding until she started school. I probably fed her for longer than necessary as it became such a part of our routine. As a working mother, routine is very important. If I didn't feed her before breakfast then she'd want to feed before I left for work. By this time she was covered in food and I was ready for work. So I'd offer first thing to avoid a messy late-for-work situation.

In hindsight all the worrying was unnecessary. When nature is allowed to run its course things just happen the way they're supposed to. It is difficult to surrender to that in this modern world where we are confined by society's expectations, limitations and schedules. Working may have made it easier to wean as for much of the time we were apart and I couldn't feed her. On the other hand it may have dragged things out for longer than necessary as Phoebe needed it for comfort, to make up for not seeing me so much, and I clung to the routine. In the end it didn't matter as it happened when we were both ready. I never got fed up with feeding Phoebe but I was ready to let it go. And she doesn't seem to have missed it much. It was one of the loveliest experiences I have ever had but man, I'm pleased to have my body back.

Aliens took my baby...

... and left one of themselves in her place.

I started writing a post about routine (to follow soon) only to have Phoebe get sick and throw herself back out of her routine.

At first I blamed Toby. He was frustrated at having to stay home for two hours twice a day so that she could sleep in her cot.

"You're frustrated?" I proclaimed. "You only have to do it two days of the week. How do you think I feel? I have to do it every day."

Anyway, this one particular day when I was too tired to argue, Toby decided that we'd stay out all afternoon and that Phoebe could darn well go to sleep in her pram.

"She doesn't sleep very well in her pram," I protested meekly. "And you'll probably only get her to sleep if you walk her in virtual silence for twenty minutes first."

He ignored me and went for a walk with Adam. I was behind with Bec and after about five minutes of the blokes chatting I figured he must have given up with Phoebe as she was standing up in her bassinet, holding onto the hood and looking out of the front of the pram. There's a reason why women were granted the position of being the primary rearer of children. Incidentally, the bassinet is now being put away for use by any future siblings of Phoebe's as it is obvious she is way too mobile for it now. Standing up... I mean, really.

So anyway, she didn't sleep and the next day was a bit out of whack but not too bad but the following day it all started to go rapidly downhill. Over the next two days she started to wake up about 30 or 40 minutes into her afternoon nap and then have another sleep when she would normally wake up. At night it would take her 30 minutes or more to fall asleep where it used to take 5-10.

It turns out that it was Toby's fault but not for the reason I first suspected. No, what had actually happened was that he had given her the lurgy. Again! (He was poorly a few weeks ago and then passed it onto Phoebe before buggering off to Sydney for the week so she was unwell for all but a day that he was gone and then made a miraculous recovery about two hours before his plane landed. Bloody typical.)

For the last three nights (not including tonight... touch wood) Toby has had to take Phoebe out in the car to help her get to sleep. She's had a disgusting runny nose, has been off her food and just generally annoyed with the world. This is a man-sized cold. I know, because Toby told me how a friend he stayed with in Sydney had it and was the angriest man in the southern hemisphere. Toby then contracted it days after arriving home and he became pretty shitty too. So imagine how my poor baby must be feeling.

Anyway, today when I wasn't looking aliens landed and took her away. They were kind enough to leave a little alien being in her place. This thing has green goo coming out of its nose (see photograph). It is very curious about our food but seems to think it is a device for testing the gravity of our planet. It knows a bit about breastfeeding but thinks it can get milk from parts of the boob other than the nipple, and even from the arm. It has a shrill shriek and it writhes around after feeding as though trying to burrow into me for a sleep (like the opposite of the film where the thing bursts out of people). It really is quite peculiar. I do hope that they bring Phoebe back tonight, preferably without her cold.

The New Routine: 8 and 9 months old

The thing with routine is that if you blink you might miss it. Really, before the age of one year (and possibly beyond that for all I know) any sort of routine you might establish is actually just a phase.

I started writing this post a month ago and no sooner did I start than she got a really awful cold, then teethed for a bit, got completely out of her routine and then set about establishing a new one which, if it hasn't changed by then anyway, will undoubtedly change on 6th January when she starts daycare.

So, just for the record, this is what I wrote on 1st November:

"Yes, it's true, we have pretty much established a routine. I feel quite confident in saying that now as it has been going on for a few weeks and we are able to deviate from said routine without causing too many headaches.

Getting Phoebe into a routine was only semi-intentional. I got the impression a couple of months ago that perhaps she was ready for a routine. She is so much more aware of what is going on around her and there is so much to fit into one day (the right amount of sleep, breastfeeds and meals) that the only way I could really be sure of what was going on was to do things at approximately the same time each day. But basically I was attempting to resolve her previously mentioned Sleep Issues.

It's been a long and at times painful journey but I think the rewards are worth it. Basically I had to spend as much time as possible over a period of a couple of weeks at home observing Phoebe. It sort of happened by accident too. One night about four weeks ago I just decided that I was no longer going to cuddle, jiggle or walk Phoebe to sleep but that she had to fall asleep in her cot. I don't know why I chose that night as we had a friend staying with us from England for a few days. He arrived at bathtime, which probably stimulated Phoebe a little too much. I spent about an hour patting her to sleep in her cot that night.

Over the following few nights we very gradually spent less and less time in her room with her while she fell asleep until eventually, the day after James left, it took about 10 minutes. During that time Toby and I devised a method of getting her to sleep in her cot, very loosely based on Tracy Hogg's Shush-Pat and Pick-Up-Put-Down methods.

• Firstly, whoever started putting her to bed was committed to see it through until she went to sleep; there was to be no shift-changing.
• If she was upset and crying we'd pick her up and cuddle her until she stopped. Then she went straight back into her cot.
• We'd lie her on her tummy and hold her down, firstly with one hand on her hips and the other patting her back. If we didn't restrain her in this manner she'd roll around wildly, crawl and stand up. If she wriggled free we'd pick her up and put her straight back down again without cuddling her or lifting her out of the cot. (Note, we only placed her on her tummy as she'd started sleeping in the position by herself when she was about 5 months old.)
• Finally we'd sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star (and various other lullabies) and whisper sleep-time mantras, such as "it's okay, you're just learning how to go to sleep, good girl" etc.

Meanwhile I was also trying to sort out her daytime sleeps so that she would sleep for longer. I established a naptime ritual and if she woke up before a full 45 minutes to an hour I would stay with her and pat her back to sleep until naptime was over. In this case I assumed that naptime would be 1 ½ - 2 hours long.

It wasn't easy. Some days she just did not want to sleep or could not because she was so wound up and over-stimulated. That said, one of my fondest memories is of a day where I kept taking her into her room for a nap and she just wouldn't fall asleep so I'd get her up, give her something to eat and start the whole cycle again. By early afternoon we'd done this a few times and most recently I'd spent about an hour trying to settle her. I decided we both needed a change of scene so I popped her into her pram and walked 3km to the beach, hoping she'd sleep on the way there and again on the way home. She did but she woke after 20 minutes so I went for a coffee and we had a lovely time. She sat in her pram and chewed a rusk whilst I enjoyed a coffee and muffin before breastfeeding her. She was very well behaved and I thoroughly enjoyed her company. She only slept for 20 minutes again on the way home but I think it's an afternoon I'll always remember."

I must have been interrupted at this point as that's all I wrote. In summary, it was hard work getting her into a routine and breaking bad sleep habits. It required lots of quiet time at home, observing Phoebe and following her cues but also being consistent and encouraging her to sleep even if she didn't seem tired (babies often seem wide awake when they're overtired). In the end it only took a couple of weeks and life has been so much easier as a result. The only bad thing is that I need to be home for her sleeps as she will really only sleep in her cot and she sleeps much better if we follow her naptime ritual.

Her naptime ritual consists of a bath if she got a bit messy during her meal, be it breakfast or lunch, followed by a clean nappy and perhaps a massage to Incy Wincy Spider. Then I put her in her sleeping bag, put on her fairy lights and close the curtains and black-out blinds. We sit in the chair in her room and read two or three stories, always finishing with Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes by Mem Fox. We have a cuddle whilst I start singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, switch off the fairy lights and place her in her cot to continue the song. There is also a blue night light in her room so I can see if her eyes are open or closed. Night time is the same but she always has a bath and she'll have a breastfeed before getting into her sleeping bag.

Once in her cot she is rolled onto her tummy and patted to sleep. We rarely need to restrain her these days. Usually it takes 10 minutes but it still frequently takes up to half an hour. If she is having trouble getting to sleep she'll shout for us to come into her room and as soon as I go in she lies down on her tummy and waits for me to pat her.

Her approximate routine when I first started this post (when she was 8 months old) was as follows:

0600 - Breastfeed
0700 - Breakfast
0800 - Begin naptime ritual
0830 - Sleep
1030 - Breastfeed
1200 - Lunch
1300 - Begin naptime ritual
1330 - Sleep
1500 - Wake
1530 - Breastfeed
1700 - Dinner
1800 - Bath

1830 - Breastfeed
1900 - Sleep
2230 - Breastfeed

This is really just a guideline. Some days she wouldn't eat much lunch and so would have afternoon tea on waking, which was really just a second lunch. Other days she wouldn't sleep for as long, or would wake up later in the morning and everything might get thrown out. And the night time breastfeed could be anywhere from 10.30pm to 4am.

In the past week she's changed again and has dropped most of those breastfeeds so her routine now looks more like this:

0645 - Breastfeed

0730 - Breakfast

0830 - Naptime

0900 - Sleep

1015 - Wake

1200 - Lunch followed by quick bath

1300 - Breastfeed

1330 - Naptime

1345 - Sleep

1515 - Wake

1700 - Dinner

1800 - Bath

1830 - Breastfeed and bedtime ritual

1915 - Sleep

Disclaimer: this seems like a really boring post but when you're the parent of a baby, especially your first, little things can seem stressful, you question yourself a lot and it is actually quite interesting to see what routines other babies follow. It's a popular topic at mums groups. I imagine I will find this quite interesting should I have any more babies and wonder when or how often I should feed them. A flexible routine takes away the guess work and can relieve a lot of stress and interestingly, most babies seem to fall into very similar routines.

So what did you do today?

I was thinking earlier this evening, if Toby comes home and asks me what I did today, what would my answer be?

Well, I was feeling very blah today, tired with a sore throat. Having fed Phoebe at 10pm last night (after attempting to have an early night due to feeling unwell) and then again at 3am, I fed her in bed at 6am this morning before finally dragging myself out of bed around 7am for breakfast. After eating breakfast with Phoebe, who wasn't overly interested in hers, I put her down for her morning nap and went for a nap myself.

So today I napped. I also:

• walked to the shops for bread and milk;
• attempted to construct a new laundry hamper (only to find the bag of screws is missing and it needs to be returned to the shop);
• took out the rubbish;
• cleaned out the kitchen bin;
• vacuumed the lounge room floor;
• picked up Phoebe's toys, various half-eaten magazines and the contents of my handbag which she had strewn across the floor;
• swept the tiles and mopped the floor where Phoebe eats;
• put on a load of washing;
• chatted to a friend on the phone who later came around for a cup of tea and another chat;
• emailed some work colleagues;
• wrote a to-do list and searched the iPhone App Store for a better to-do list app;
• had a snack in front of the telly whilst Phoebe was sleeping so that I could have lunch with her when she woke (wish I'd known she was going to sleep til 3.45pm);
• sang Phoebe to sleep twice;
• breastfed Phoebe twice;
• prepared food for Phoebe three times, then sat with her whilst she played with said food three times, stuck some of it in her mouth and spat most of it back out again and then cleared up said food remnants three times;
• read four books to Phoebe;
• massaged Phoebe twice;
• pushed Phoebe around the house on her little bike* and then comforted her and put a cold compress on her head after she fell off the bike onto a toy she was after;
• danced with Phoebe;
• changed Phoebe's nappy three or four times and scraped poo off one of them.

Funnily enough when Toby got home he did ask what I did today, only what he actually said was "so what did you do whilst Phoebe slept for four hours today?" Why then, given the above list, did I feel like I'd done nothing and that I had to justify how I'd spent my time?

* The "bike" has four wheels. Bike comes from bicycle as in two cycles right? So what are four cycles? A fourcycle? A quadcycle? Does that make it a quike? Or a quake? A fourke? Or a quad bike?

The thing about sleep is...

... you don't know how much you need until you're not getting it.

"Nobody said it was easy; no one ever said it would be so hard."

The Scientist - Coldplay

In my last post I mentioned Phoebe's Sleep Issues so I suppose I should elaborate. The thing is it's been so long since then and so much has changed that I'm not sure I can remember what I wanted to say. So I'll try to start at the beginning.

A few weeks ago Phoebe seemed to be getting herself into a nice little Gina Ford-esque routine. She'd feed around midnight and again around 5am (I don't think Gina actually allows this but never mind) then wake around 7am and have some breakfast before heading off for a nap around 9. She'd nap for about 45 minutes then wake until around midday and nap for about an hour and a half. She sometimes napped for around 40 minutes in the late afternoon too. This lasted a few days. Not long at all really.

For some reason I found it really stressful when she snapped back out of the routine. All of a sudden she was all over the place. She'd wake up at 5am, nap whenever, if ever, and we'd spend ages trying to settle her at night. I decided she was overtired so one night about 2 weeks ago we moved her to her own room and brought her bedtime forward to 6.30pm. That first night it took us an hour to get her to sleep so she ended up going to bed at her usual bedtime but the previous night had also taken an hour which meant she went to sleep an hour later than usual, so perhaps we were getting somewhere. Gradually over the next couple of days she got into this new rhythm and things seemed to be going quite well until suddenly it all went pear-shaped again a few days after my chat with my boss.

I don't remember the details now as it is all a blur but it seemed very important to us that we get her into a routine and that she sleep well during the day and she didn't seem to be doing that. It's possible she was picking up on my anxiety regarding next year following the Return To Work talk.

Then again, it also seemed to happen around the same time that the milk blister occurred (see next post).

Now I don't know what's going on. I was going mad for a while. One morning, after spending an eternity trying to get her to take a morning nap, I took her for a walk in the pram out of desperation. It was hot, it was not the best time of day to be out walking. I had spent days, if not weeks, at home trying to help Phoebe into her routine, seemingly for nothing. Every morning that I struggled to get her to sleep signalled another day that she wasn't getting enough and another day I'd have to wait to get her Sleep Issues sorted. I phoned Toby and told him I was irrationally angry with him for not putting her into her cot for a nap that morning. (Toby had looked after her whilst I slept.) I cried. I was so fed up with it all.

Since then I've had to chill out and let her fit her naps into my day again, within reason. Perhaps I was feeling under pressure to get her into a routine before she was ready, in preparation for childcare next year. But then I was also convinced that she was ready for a routine. So what threw her out? The milk blister? My anxiety? Her vaccinations? Her cold? Her cough? Teething? All of the above? Toby had the nerve to suggest it might be to do with too much caffeine in my diet. HOW VERY DARE HE!

It's hard when sleep is out because it throws everything else out too and weaning is hard enough without not knowing when you should feed and whether it should be breast or solid. I worry that she can't settle herself, that she doesn't have regular naps, that her naps aren't long enough, that she's not eating enough, that she's having too many breastfeeds, that she's waking in the night for feeds when she shouldn't, that she isn't getting enough sleep.

So I have no idea whether I've covered what I meant to cover but the situation is currently this. She generally goes to bed well although we have to cuddle her almost to sleep. I've been sticking the sling on and walking around her bedroom. It's probably the wrong thing to do but I really just need her to catch up on sleep and get settled again. She often wakes up once in the night at quite random times. She then wakes up around 5am. For a while last week she was waking much later or she'd wake at 5am then feed and sleep again for an hour or two. That led me to wonder if her early waking is temperature related. A couple of times she's woken with a full nappy or because she's coughing but even then she won't go back to sleep. She's up for the day. This generally means she's only had 10 or 11 hours sleep. Today and yesterday she napped well but before that she was having three or four 30-40 minute catnaps, resulting in nowhere near enough sleep for a 7 1/2 month old baby.

It's frustrating because if a baby doesn't get enough sleep, it doesn't sleep well. I feel like we can't do anything else in terms of setting a routine and reducing breastfeeds until she's caught up on her sleep and is sleeping long hours at night and napping well during the day. I don't really feel in a massive hurry to establish a routine or drop feeds, but it can be very difficult for me to plan anything when I don't know when she's going to be sleeping.

Hopefully I'll find some time over the next couple of days to tell you about the milk blister.

Height of confusion

So the next night she slept right through until 5.30am! My boobs were so hard and painful that I got her up for a feed before she started with the hungry noises. She seemed pretty grateful.

So that was that. All back to normal again.

Or so we thought!

Last night she was a bit out of whack at bedtime. We did everything pretty much as we usually do: 

1700: walk, sleep in pram

1800: feed

1830: bath

1900: feed

1930: bed

1945: sleep

So far so good, until:

2010: wake up, apparently hungry, therefore feed.

2100: back in cot, sleep again.

And not only that but what would usually look somewhat like:

0600: wake, feed

actually ended up more like:

0100: wake, reswaddled

0230: wake again, hungry, got food this time.

0245: back in cot, happy

0630: wake, feed.

What the???

Then, tonight, exactly the same thing, only last night she was easy to settle after her random post-bedtime 8pm feed and tonight she was a little minx. I think she wanted to stay up and play but we were quite strict and insisted this was her bedtime. You have to instill good habits in them from an early age. And besides, House was on and it was the season finale!

So god knows what tonight will bring but if this pattern continues then we may have to change our tactics slightly although I'm not sure quite how just yet.

I've started using my MP3 player to record her various noises. My sister and I used to love recording our voices when we were young, back in the days of tape recorders; I remember how every now and then the tape would get mangled and either record too quickly or play back too slowly and our voices would be all distorted and we'd scare ourselves thinking we'd recorded a ghost in the room. I was actually disappointed when I figured out what was really going on. I used to love listening to old tapes recorded when we were really young. Clare's voice was so cute. I remember one in particular when we were singing Hickory Dickory Dock but Clare couldn't speak properly and she'd say "Hick dick dock mouse an cock". Another recording is of me reading The Three Little Pigs and getting annoyed with Clare interrupting me. I wonder if Dad still has those old tapes. No one has cassette players anymore; what would we listen to them on? 

Perhaps Phoebe will like to listen to her cute little baby noises when she's older. I also think it might help us interpret her cries, plus it'll be really interesting to hear how her noises change over time. I tried to record her with the camera but that was way too distracting for her. She'd stop talking and just stare at the camera.

Speaking of which, I thought you might like to see a cute little movie of Phoebe playing on her activity mat this morning although to be honest, it's probably only appealing to grandparents and aunties, and of course besotted parents. You'll see her hand-eye coordination is improving as she is actually able to delibrately hit her toy. You'll also hear Toby sliding the outside door open and shut and flip-flopping past between the bbq and the kitchen as he cooks up bacon and eggs for breakfast. Yum!

So what did Phoebe do last night?

In a nutshell, she woke around 1am, making "wah" noises and Toby reswaddled her and settled her back in her cot, which was a bit of an effort as she really wasn't keen. Eventually she dropped off but woke again around 2.45am and this time I fed her. She seemed to be taking a lot of milk and then she went all dozy and milk drunk and so I swaddled her and put her back down. She slept until 7am.

I'm still no wiser as to why she's waking up but she definitely seemed hungry last night so perhaps it is a growth spurt. I am still trying to figure out what sort of mood she's in today but she seems quite tired. Toby has offered me the chance to go for a swim but, aside from the damp and dreary weather putting me off, I really don't think I can be bothered to think about Phoebe and what she might need to do when. It's quite exhausting and I feel like just going with the flow today. I really can't be bothered with getting her in and out of the car today and it seems like a good opportunity to do all the indoorsy things I've been meaning to do for days, such as soak some beans and a bit of online research.

And yet more about sleep

Yes, sleep indeed is something that parents obsess over. Sleep and routine, which are inextricably linked. As is food. Do not expect that this will be the last post on the subject.

After almost three weeks of sleeping through the night for periods of eight to eleven hours, Phoebe has behaved somewhat differently over the last two nights. 

On Friday night as we were going to bed around 11pm she awoke and decided she was hungry. We thought maybe she was cold as the temperature had dropped since we put her to bed at 8pm. So we fed her and tucked her up in her sleeping bag and there she remained until 6.45am.

Last night we put her to bed at 7.15pm, around 30-45 minutes earlier than usual because for once she'd actually had a decent afternoon nap for a couple of hours in her cot around 3pm, rather than me having to take her out in the pram around 4 or 5pm to get her to sleep. In fact she'd been napping fairly regularly throughout the day: about an hour every two or three. She surprised us by waking up at 8pm apparently hungry. We fed her and cuddled her for a while and then put her back down at 9pm. She then woke up again at 3.30am. 

I didn't know what had hit me. I am no longer in that automatic zombie mode of getting up, feeding the baby, changing the baby, swaddling the baby, placing the baby back in the cot, going to the toilet and eagerly crawling back into bed. Now I lie in bed listening, trying to wake up, trying to engage my brain, thinking "Why is she awake? What could she possibly want? Is she really hungry? Should I feed her? Should I try to get her back to sleep? Should I ignore her? If I let her get up now will she do the same tomorrow night? How will this influence tomorrow? What happened to her GODDAMN ROUTINE for crying out loud???" Then Toby gently taps me on the shoulder and whispers "Lins, Phoebe's awake," and it's all I can do to stop myself from yelling out "Yes, I know and just what do you want me to do about it?"

Anyway, I fed her and got her back into her cot in about ten minutes, only for her to wake again within three hours. After another feed, Toby changed her, swaddled her and attempted to get her back to sleep in her cot but she was having none of it and so she ended up in bed with us. Well, didn't she look as smug as a bug in a rug gazing lovingly first at Toby then at me like the cat that got the cream. And there we all slept for the next hour and a half.

There are a few possible factors at play here:

• She could be cold. We placed her in a sleeping bag to counteract this but...
• It's difficult to swaddle her when she's in a sleeping bag and she definitely sleeps better when well swaddled.
• It could be a growth spurt, but then she seems to be constantly having growth spurts as any time I can't explain her behaviour, be it excessive sleepiness, excessive wakefulness, frequent feeding, frequent crying etc. I attribute it to growth spurts. The current one has been going for about a week on and off, with different symptoms throughout.
• She could be in the early stages of teething and there are other signs pointing to this, such as her red cheeks (which could also be a sign of good health), her constant dribbing and sucking her fists (which she's been doing for about a month), her transition from sucking my finger to chewing on it (which may be a normal developmental and explorative progression) and her recent afternoon grizzlies (which may or may not be colic or overtiredness - see below).
• She could be hungry, due to not feeding well at bedtime feed, due to colic or overtiredness.
• She could be thirsty. The air has been particularly dry these past few days due to south-westerly winds. I awoke frequently on Friday night with an uncomfortably dry throat and nose, needing a drink. It makes sense that she might feel this way too.
• Perhaps the first awakening led to the next and so on, due to not changing her nappy between times. We don't usually change her nappy at night and didn't want to stimulate her but perhaps she was then woken due to having a wet nappy.
• As mentioned, her nap times were different throughout the day, but her cumulative sleep time didn't seem much different.

Honestly, being a parent, or at least the primary caregiver of a young baby, requires the precision and planning of a military strategist, the investigative skills of a detective and the innate ability to analyse cause and effect, not to mention patience and flexibility. You have to constantly reassess your plans based upon what your baby has done, or how your baby is behaving. If baby doesn't behave as you expected or hoped then you have to do a quick analysis of all the possible causes, alternative courses of action and potential outcomes, and what cascading effect these may all have. 

Consider this: you go for a swim whilst hubby looks after baby during baby's sleep cycle. Baby doesn't sleep. Baby falls asleep in sling (on hubby) whilst you and hubby finish off a coffee post-swim. Hubby then has to go back to work. Do you:

a) take sling from hubby and put it on you and hang around the park until baby awakes, bearing in mind that baby doesn't sleep for long in the sling?

b) take baby from sling, put in car and head back home as per original plan, thus risking waking baby during transition from sling to car seat or on arrival back home resulting in an even shorter nap than had baby been left in sling?

c) gently lay sling in pram and push around the park for as long as baby will sleep, hopefully 40 minutes?

If c) then do you then feed baby and go home, or go home and then feed baby? And so on and so forth. It's like planning your next move in chess.

Anyway, tonight we've ditched the sleeping bag, swaddled her tightly and tucked her in with some very secure blankets (it's all about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) people, and the prevention thereof; there are so many rules). We'll see if that makes a difference. Of course, it could have just been a one-off anyway.

Phoebe's also been experiencing the afternoon grizzlies. Since she's been sleeping through the night the hours from 4pm onwards are something of a juggling act. Trying to time her naps so that she doesn't get too much or too little sleep before bedtime, so that she isn't overtired and doesn't go to bed too early and so that she enjoys bathtime but so that we still get time to ourselves to have dinner and tidy up, is quite a challenge. 

But these grizzlies are more than just managing the witching hour. Twice now she has been inconsolable at really inconvenient times during the early afternoon, such as when out for coffee with friends, or today at a baby shower. I'm beginning to wonder if she has colic as I read yesterday that it starts around three months (right on time, she's such a textbook baby) and on the advice of a friend I gave her some Brauer's Colic Relief, a homeopathic remedy which seemed to calm her. However, I'm sure it's just a case of having too short a nap (usually because we're going out) and that leading to a whole host of other problems. It makes going out in the afternoons really difficult, which is a bummer as I have my citizenship ceremony during the afternoon in a couple of weeks. Hopefully this is just a phase and it will have passed by then, although if it is colic then the same source tells me that it'll last three months.

Firstly, she'll get tired very quickly throughout her next cycle. I don't necessarily feed her straight away because it's less than two hours since her last feed. So if she doesn't get back to sleep, which she generally won't if we're out and about and she's stimulated, then she becomes hungry and tired and she gets confused. I try to get her to sleep. She can't sleep and she screams and screams. Eventually she becomes due for her feed anyway, manages to communicate that she's hungry and I feed her. But she doesn't feed well because she's tired. She pulls on and off the breast, gets easily distracted and gives herself a windy pain. This leads to her being tired, in pain and still a bit hungry, only she can't really eat because she has a pain. So then she gets frustrated too and screams louder, making the pain worse and making it even harder for her to sleep. 

The only way out of this really is to walk her around for a while, change her position frequently to remove the wind, persist with feeding her, and remove all stimulation so that she can get to sleep. Today I spent an hour and a half trying to calm her and get her to sleep at a baby shower (I'd like to say it was a good party but I don't really know as I didn't feel I was really there) and eventually she fell asleep in the sling she was so exhausted. Even taking her into the bedroom didn't help as she was too hot and could still hear all the noise from the lounge. After trying to settle her for some time with her screaming, whilst my friend was trying to breastfeed her baby, she eventually told me she was hungry and I offered her the breast. After a couple of minutes of sucking she stopped. She laid her head back and looked right at me. She looked positively content. And then, the little minx smiled! I couldn't help but laugh at her - how could she go from being inconsolably upset one minute to being happy and smiley the next? I had to look away from her so as not to encourage such cheeky behaviour.

I'm done... I lost most of this post just after having finished it and before managing to publish it. I don't know why it didn't auto-save but my battery ran flat. I'm now tired and past my bedtime so if the post seems a bit disjointed and ends abruptly, it's because it's a rewrite and I've forgotten what I wanted to say.

More about sleep

Did I mention that Phoebe is definitely sleeping through these days?

For about two weeks now, since she was about 10 weeks old, she has slept around 9 or 10 hours a night, the minimum being 8 and the maximum being 11 ½!! It's bliss. The strange thing is I've been more tired since she started doing it. She feeds around 4.30pm then we go for a walk to give her a nap in the pram. When she wakes up around 6.30pm we have another feed, then it's bathtime and usually the three of us climb in the big bath together. It's the best time of day and is a chance for all of us to wind down. Toby loves coming home from work to have a bath with Phoebe. After her bath she'll have a top-up feed around 7.30pm and go to bed sometime between 8 and 8.30pm. Obviously, these are approximate times and they vary from day to day as we're not exactly a strict routine family. I still have to express before I go to bed around 10 or 11pm or, if I go to bed earlier, I often have to get up at 4am to express because my boobs are like watermelons. In firmness, not size, that is. God, imagine having boobs the size of watermelons. What a nightmare. Jordan nearly does, but not quite. That woman from EuroTrash who died of a heart attack... what was her name? Lola, or something? She had boobs not far off the size of watermelons and look what happened to her. They weren't natural of course.

Anyway, it appears I have veered from the subject of sleep to that of boobs - very easy to do when you're breastfeeding. It probably means I should skip the boob pumping and just head for an early bed tonight.

Whilst I am (back) on the subject of sleep though, I'll just finish off. Phoebe wakes up around 6am, feeds, plays the staring and laughing at me game for a while, has a nappy change and then goes back to bed for about 2 or 3 hours! This morning I had to actually get her out of her cot and take her to mums group in her pyjamas! She is the amazing sleeping baby. In the mornings that is. Afternoons are a different story but that's for another post. I'm off to bed before I lose the plot. Goodnight.