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Me Mum won't self-settle!!!

30 August 2006, 17:22

Dear Essential Baby,

Me mum is 35 years old and she won’t self-settle. She don’t sleep at all during the day, so should be really tired, but I hear her every 2-3 hours during the night, crying “What’s wrong with me? Why am I always so fucking hungry!?!?!???? Why can’t I sleeeeeeeeep????”

Me is not old enough to get out of bed to pat and shoosh her and me don’t think me dad does it either, though I suspect she may clobber him if he tried. What should I do? Shouldn’t she be old enough to sleep through the night? All the books say you shouldn’t need a feed at all during the night after you’re about 6 months old, but she’s always getting up and going to the kitchen which wakes me up!!! Please help me!

Mwa mwa
Scout

PS. What does “fucking” mean?

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Je m'appelle Le Coquette. Je veux sucer votre visage

26 August 2006, 17:49

[...thanks Babelfish translator, my french is maison de merde.]

I love this photo of Scout – she does this funny thing with her tongue when she smiles, like she’s a frikkin’ coquette or something (more pics at my flickr account).

Seven Months Cheeky (click to enlarge)

Inspired by 2 Pink Lines (fellow mum), I thought a list of Scout’s achievements at the 7 month mark was in order…

• Can sit for long periods of time unattended and balances herself to play with toys.
• Can pull herself up on all fours from her belly where she rocks back and forth attempting to crawl.
• Sucks my face (slobbery, wot) if I say “Kiss for mama”. We have tested this to see if it’s coincidence or a genuine reaction, and she won’t (yet) do it if we say “Kiss for papa” (insert horrid little proud moment here).
• Commando crawls backwards/sideways.
• Works to get a toy just out of reach.
• Can roll over from front to back (no banana on the back to front front yet).
• Can remember people and gets excited (like the baby in the Huggies ad) when people she likes walks into the room, or thoroughly bored if she’s seen them a zillion times before.
• Reacts to voices, particularly when you say “Sophia Scout!!!!! Where’s your cute little pout???”
• Reaches out to touch babies and toddlers, often pulling hair (?%^&*!!), most often from babies who, alas, don’t have much hair.
• Has amassed a tidy sum of nicknames including Button, Bellynicebelly, Ladybird (she loves ‘em!), Moo, Boomanchu (whenever she’s having a grizzle), PucciPucci & Budd (short for Buddha).
• No teeth yet but very fat pot belly.
• Cannot yet speak French. Or English for that matter.

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But they told me this was a one-off designer original!

17 August 2006, 09:42

A catfight brewing in da hood

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Such a thing as too much advice?

15 August 2006, 09:47

I swear the increase in incidences of PND is, in some part, due to the expectations others put on us about being mothers. I don’t pretend to know the exact machinations of the PND wheel, but know the horrible pit in my stomach when someone asks if Scout is “sleeping through the night”? Oh, you know that after 6 months they don’t need to feed at night, you know….. You only need to feed her 4 times a day at this age….. A routine is a must when they’re 6 months….. as if somehow you’re less of a mother if you don’t follow suit. Most of this advice is extremely well-meaning of course, but there is so much conflicting advice out there, with accents on all the current-day philosophies around child-rearing.

Breastfeeding being one of them. Now I’m not the Breastapo, and even though I am really pro-breastfeeding, there are women out there who simply can’t breastfeed, as hard as they’ve tried, so who are we to judge? When I got to the 6 month mark and thought I might introduce one bottle of formula a day to give me a break, an ABA Counsellor talked me out of it. I’m glad she did, in retrospect, but my point is that there is soooo much pressure from so-called experts about the “correct” way to raise, feed and schedule our children.

And to compound the problem, seeing a (Melburnian) paediatrician advertise infant formula with absolutely no disclaimer that breast is best, is outrageous. The Sleep Clinic I went to was supervised by that particular paediatrician so I cancelled my spot there after one visit.

In my dark days I went to two Sleep Schools and one sleep clinic. The Sleep School Slut they used to call me. None of them helped me really (with the exception of one school that showed me a good settling technique), in fact I think they made the whole situation worse, as I came out the other end having no clue who to believe and doubting my own abilities to do the right thing by Scout. At the time, I was having a rough trot emotionally, but the schools all lead me to believe that Scout’s catnapping during the day was a solvable sleep issue and that she’d start doing it at night if I didn’t nip it in the bud. As it turned out, I wasn’t that successful in resettling her and she’s kind of grown out of it now, anyway. When I decided on my own volition that resettling wasn’t going to work, I let her catnap and we were both so much happier.

One sleep-school in particular kind of pissed me off. At the time I was doing 6 feeds a day, and Scout was sleeping quite well at night, so during the day, feeds were roughly 3 hours apart. The mothercraft nurse suggested to make Scout more “settled” that I should space feeds out to 4 hours. “So you mean drop a feed?” asked I, aware that there were only 24 hours in a day and thus not enough room to space them out to 4 hours given her nice 9-10 hour gap overnight. “No, no, just space out the feeds to 4 hours, you don’t have to drop a feed…” she insisted. I didn’t argue with her, but it was totally illogical. They wrote me up a “routine” which Scout has long since given the arse and she got down to 5 feeds a day in her own time.

The Sleep School industry is a thriving one, with links to the medical profession, but I don’t think they’re careful enough with the delicate hormonal balance of mothers who feel like failures anyway (hence the admission to sleep school) and pile pressures about what babies “should” be doing.

Current thinking and approaches are always going to change – in 1971, it was the norm to bottlefeed (according to my mum she couldn’t find anyone who could support her breastfeeding so she gave it up after 3 weeks) sleep babies on their tummies and introduce solids by 6 weeks, but something that will never change is the vulnerability of new (and renewed) mums who really need a frikkin’ break.

Which is why we get our offspring to assist us with household chores

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Love me a Bargain

13 August 2006, 15:26

I like to think of it as being savvy rather than cheap. Picked up these little beauties, 5 entire scoutfits (3 brand new) and a fisher-price toy all for $40 at the Baby and Kids Market. The Market alternates between Malvern, Hawthorn, Berwick and Box Hill, roughly every month. They have big-ticket items as well – prams, highchairs, safety gates, cots etc.

Love me a Bargain

On the way home, I saw something I never ever thought I’d see in Australia – someone Chucking a Britney on Elgar Road. I was in the car with a couple of girlfriends when we all did a double-take, swearing to god we didn’t just see a woman with a roughly 3-4 month old baby driving unrestrained on her lap. Alas, we saw just that.

“N”, who was driving, overtook her on the left, beeped her horn like a demon possessed and yelled No, No, NO!!!! You can’t do that, you can’t do that. The stupid woman looked over (hard to miss a chorus of outraged mums shrieking at you) but completely ignored us. We got her number plate, too, the idiot. What part of You Stupid, Careless, Dumbfucking Ignoramus did she not understand? It’s times like these I really think you need to have a licence before you’re allowed to have a kid.

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3 Cheers for the Bank

11 August 2006, 13:48

Ah. The Bank. Hallowed Icon of escalating interest rates and exorbitant bank fees. Customer Service occasionally questionable. It must be said, though, that they really do care about their staff…

Last week The Bank threw a luncheon for those on maternity leave (interestingly enough, all women) to, ahem, “network” (cliche, cliche). Little (fat) Scout was ever so well-behaved, and afterwards, perfectly charmed my New Boss, whom I had never met…

We had coffee after the lunch to discuss return to work options next January. I desperately want to go back to work 3 days a week, the thought of having someone I barely know looking after Scout 5 days a week and me only 2, being anathema (actually, I’d rather not have to work at all, but mortgage and burgeoning interest rates dictate situation).

Legally, The Bank is only obligated to accept me back into my present position on a full-time basis although it is to their own benefit to compromise with mums returning to work. And would you know, they actually walk the walk and talk the talk (if only they stopped talking to the Reserve Bank). My new boss (previous boss on mat leave also) was not only rather conducive to the idea, she suggested that in 3 days I could do the parts of my job that I love and give the other part the arse… ahem, to someone else. All yet to be officially confirmed of course, but it’s looking good. I don’t really consider myself a “Company Girl” but must admit I was rather impressed with their flexibility on this one.

AND I have a childcare place confirmed – my second choice in the area, but at least it’s not an ABC Centre. Ah, Shit is coming together, people. [contented sigh]

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101 things to do with Infants...

9 August 2006, 11:50

#1 Indulge in a spot of Air Hockey

#2 Take on the Isle of Man Circuit

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My Bastard Scumlicking Laundrette

4 August 2006, 19:34

So our washing machine has died, right, so out of desperation we’ve had to use the local Laundrette, about 3 mins walk from home.

I pop down there this evening, laundry + baby in tow, not an easy task, with basket perched precariously on top of pram, and put my washing into machine, let’s call it Machine#4. I put my $2 in (again not an easy task, given I only had notes and $2 coins and had to go back and bribe my neighbour to hand over coin in exchange for notes), close the lid to activate the cycle and continue on my walk (to get beer, but that’s another story).

I pop back after about half an hour (with baby asleep, may God come down and strike me pickled) to collect washing. I open the lid of Machine #4. No clothes. Empty machine. Where the f&^O(#$ are my clothes? mutter I. I lift the lid to, let’s call it Machine #5 and there are my clothes, entirely unwashed with soap still all through them.

Some Scumlicking ahole has come along (in fact they may have already been there) taken my clothes out of Machine #4 just as the cycle began, exchanging them with their own clothes. Someone stole my freakin’ $2 wash cycle! How low can you go? I know it’s only 2 freakin’ dollars and thus a small outrage but it really pissed me off.

Does dodgy come with the package or do you have to buy it extra? Hell knows I’ll be sitting on the machine next time to guard the pearly lid. Perhaps borrow a few feisty watch dogs. Come to think of it, perhaps Scout will do…

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