Sht Happens,

I feel like pre-baby, I vastly overestimated the amount of 'blow out' nappies we were going to have, and whilst I appreciate that might sound like a really privileged thing to say, it is not, or at least not in my view.

I do have to wonder if one of the reasons we've not had as many 'blow outs' as the internet and other parents led us to believe we would is because my son has had digestive issues since he was only a few days old, leading to us spending far too many hours in the hospital when he was 4-6 days old (and yes, that was over the Christmas period) so yes, we've gone through difficult periods of constipation, but that normally results in the kind of thing that you would expect to cause a 'blow out' and it very rarely does. In completely honesty, the only real problems we have had have either been when we haven't realised he's pooped immediately and he's been sat in it for a bit of time, or when we've checked if he's pooped by pulling the frilly bit away from his leg, and then there is a leak... There have been more times when he has peed through his nappy, but even that hasn't been overly common. From what I understood in the before times, I thought it would be the sort of thing which happened at least a couple of times a week.

Why does it matter? Surely this is meaning that parenting is easier than you expected it to be? Well, no, not really, because you very quickly learn that cleaning up a dirty nappy or even a very wet nappy is not as complicated as you think it is, even when you accidentally leave the packet of baby wipes on the table when you're repacking the nappy bag. That might be because we carry wet bags (the type from reusable nappies, even though we're not using the reusable nappies at the moment), at least two extra outfits and I recently left the packing cubes of clothes we took on a road trip in the car because they had extra clothes, extra muslins, extra bibs and extra wet bags in the car for a week in case I needed them each time I went out, but I like to think that's just normal preparation... 

So, why does it matter? Because when you are planning how many clothes you are going to need for your baby it is a factor, and if I was being really nerdy (which I can be) I'd say it's the thing that takes you from thinking, how many clothes do I need, the answer is n, and turning n into like 10n (or 10 times n). You over plan, over buy, and then have to store all of these clothes that you just don't need. Some of it you bought, some of it friends and family bought and gifted to you, some of it you inherit from other people who've had babies, and some of it will never come out of the wardrobe, or it will be worn once or twice before the baby that was so tiny in it the first time you put it on is now spilling out of it in all directions, and you probably didn't even get a photo for the person who bought it for you. (I had always planned on getting a photo of the baby in each outfit that was bought for them and sending it to the person who bought it, and I have really tried, but I have also lost track of so many of the gifts, because there were a lot and there was a lot going on, obviously!!) 

Now, I know some people will say prioritise the gifts, but even doing that there was still a lot, or don't have them or let them rewear something that has been stained with food or anything else, but particularly when they get to the age little man is at the moment where they are eating purees, some things go on the outfit no matter how many bibs or wipes or anything you use, and then they never come out. And if you choose not to reuse things because that has happened, you'd just be spreading out the amount of things you were getting stains on, because like I said, it happens. There is a reason that some people keep one outfit, or set of outfits for nursery, and it's not just because kids play with glitter and paint and other messy stuff, but because they are messy when they learn to eat. My son was wearing a vest, t-shirt, shorts and a bib for about ten minutes this morning, because he dribbled his porridge down his bid and his shirt (and a tiny bit onto his vest) and smeared his porridge on his shorts, so everything but the vest had to come off, and that was only because I didn't have the energy or motivation to take him upstairs for a tiny wet patch on the vest which would be dry in no time thanks to the current weather, or would get bigger when he dribbled through or around his next bib. Last night, following a rather successful encounter with a pumpkin puree pocket (try saying that three times fast without tripping over the letters...) I had to put the whole baby in the bath because it was everywhere, and that's just where we're at along the weaning journey at the moment, so unless I stick to foods which won't stain (which sound beige and boring) we're probably more likely to be going for multiple changes a day now, even more so than when he was tiny, and I'm fine with that.

But I'm also still finding and packing up his nought to three month clothes and some of the newborn, first size and tiny baby ones as well, including the pram suits and realising that even though pram suits are generous in size so mostly you can wear them a little longer than some of the baby grows of the same size, they're still not in them for long and you don't need three or four to give you time to wash and dry them because they don't get that dirty on every wear, babies don't sweat like adults do in puffer jackets and, most importantly, most baby clothing is actually tumble dryable, so it can get washed and dried in between uses pretty easily, as long as parents can keep their eyes open long enough to run the machines.

That Wedding Series,

Welcome back to the Charlie moans about wedding planning and wedding things... If you're getting bored, don't worry, it's nearly here, which hopefully means the moaning over it is nearly over. Wouldn't that be good?

What do I want to moan about today? Okay, this is less of a moan, and more of a... I don't know. 

Once upon a tradition, people hadn't lived together before they got married and the vast majority wouldn't have lived out of their parent's house, so the things you got for wedding presents were essentially the things to kit out your kitchen or towels, because you didn't have any. It was like with a baby shower - you've not got any of the things you need yet, so here is everything. As time moved on, people potentially had lived out even if they didn't live together - for example, my mum had lived with her sister in law who is also one of her closest friends, whilst my dad still stayed at home with him parents - so instead of needing everything from scratch, wedding presents were things like a better set of pans, like Le Creuset, or a wedding dinner set which only ever comes out at Christmas or special occasions and never for the kids. (I don't blame my parents for that, because I drop things a lot.)

These days, it's really not that uncommon to have lived together before you marry and it's also not uncommon to already have a child or two, and so when people ask what you want as a wedding present, a lot of people will ask for money for the honeymoon. Mentioning no names but a few of my relatives think that is hideous. I'm passing no judgement because I completely understand why that would be the case, but I also understand why people don't much like the idea of it. Maybe one of the reasons I'm not overly fussed either way is because I don't currently have a passport and neither does my son, so we're probably not going to get the chance to book a honeymoon abroad and we've realised that our son isn't the biggest fan of a road trip which takes out a lot of options where we don't need passports. Maybe if we were booking something I would be saying the same as others because hell, we don't need anything...

We've been living in a house that we share since October, were living together in my house for a few months before that and were living across both houses before that, because from pretty early on we knew that we just wanted to spend time together, but none of that is simple, because we had to try and condense the contents of two houses into one, and at the same time gained a whole bunch of stuff for the baby. We were really, really lucky in that we were giving a lot of things to help us with the baby, but it was more stuff to find places for and there have needed to be a lot of decisions to get rid of some things and there's still a lot where we have duplicates of things. Some of that isn't so bad because it's things like milk frothers, which break when I use them a lot so having a spare is fine, or kettles, which is good because we have a baby who needs bottles making and my kettle is a dumbass smart thing that likes dribbling (but we love being able to yell at the Alexa to turn it off when we've left it on Keep Warm) but other things are less easy because they're things like a fridge freezer (so we have one in the garage to keep Costco packs of drinks in or huge packs of chicken nuggets and the other in the house).

All this is to say that tradition wedding presents aren't really something which we would need at all. Fancy wine glasses? We've got a few, ta. Fancy dinner set? As mentioned before, I drop things. In fact, we both do. Also, whilst I can understand that some people might want to get something personalised, I think it's a difficult one if the couple don't have a registry and ask for something particularly, because unless you know people really, really well, taste is a major factor, and decor is personal. 

You'd think from all this that I would be all over making a registry for the wedding and the truth is that I tried, but the problem is that we really don't want or need anything we can list from stores and if we do want or need it, it's normally because it's out of the budget of what we can spend on a month to month basis and we're trying to get past the wedding before making any major purchases because weddings are expensive enough, and I'm on maternity leave! Statutory pay is absolutely no joke, and we need to be careful about things we need to pay out for - like the photographer for the wedding - and things we don't - like an American style fridge and a carpenter to modify the kitchen cabinets so it fits where we want it, considering we have a working fridge. 

As far as I've researched there isn't something that can create like, pots, essentially, for gifting into, where the money is to be used for something specific, but that people can contribute whatever amount they want to contribute to. Let's face it, I could do a registry and put an American style fridge on there, but there are very few guests coming to my wedding that I think would be spending that kind of money on a gift - nor would I want them to! BUT if were had, for example, a 'pot' for the kitchen which was for the fridge and the work to fit it where it should be going, and people could choose to add whatever they wanted to it as a gift, it takes some of the hassle out for them trying to think of a gift, or the worry we won't need it, use it or like it, and also would help us with actual practical things we need or want to do with the house. Another example could easily be the bathroom. Neither of us is a fan on the tile, the cabinets have seen better days and the general amount of storage in there is abysmal, plus a really stupid part of the shower screen is broken so it's not working perfectly but is not annoying enough to warrant being high on the list for being fixed at present, but have a 'pot' for it where it's assigned to something like Wickes or B&Q or something, something that was specifically bathrooms, that would be really cool, though I appreciate it would be something that would take a whole lot of administration, but it would still be really cool. As it is, when people ask what we need I give the equivalent of a non-comital shrug, because I really don't know... 

And let's face it, a gift registry is only ever suggestions anyway...

There Is Something More Frustrating Than A Blank Page,

I have thought before that the most frustrating thing is a blank page, but that's because I've never been planning something big as far in advance as I have been with the wedding.

The thing about the wedding is it gives me plenty of things I want to write about, but there is a lot of it that I don't want to post until after the wedding because some of the people reading it will be attending the wedding and I'm being a bit River Song over it (Spoilers...) 

And let's be honest, there is a lot of it which would just be moaning, partly because the things I have already posted have been moans. Wedding planning is stressful and there is a lot to it that I never knew about or never thought about and some really stupid bits like, because we already have a child together, his birth needs to be re-registered after the wedding so that he is seen as a child of our marriage, even though he wasn't because he was born over eight months before we were married...

It seems really stupid to me, but it is something that we have to do.

I have even considered posting some of the things I have been writing or wanting to write about the wedding, but blanking out certain details or changing details so that it doesn't have those sort of spoilers, but at the same time it seems weird to do this. For once, it is not a blank page which frustrates me, but pages full of things I want to say that it is not the time to say, so I have to delay it until after the wedding is done.

That Photo,

Let me start this by saying I am a habitual nail biter and have been for a decent chunk of my life. I have used the "trick" of painting my nails clear or nude or with a transparent glitter in order to not bite them for a small period, but my nails are pathetic and not just because of how long I have bitten them for; my mum's nails kind of suck as well (sorry Mum). I was never really bothered by it. And then I got engaged...

When we got engaged, I didn't want a photo of the ring on my hand where my nails were visible, because I just hated that they looked so awful and having a beautiful engagement ring (I think she's gorgeous anyway) only made me feel like they looked worse, but I just didn't take the 'traditional' photo or photos like the photo of just my hand and the ring or one with my hand on him with the ring visible, and I never really thought it bothered me too much that I didn't have it. And then I thought about our wedding photos... 

We've spent a fair amount of money on having a photographer for certain parts of the day, partly with the idea that at least one of those photos will be hanging in our house, and let's face it, both sets of parents are likely to want a photo from it in their homes, as are our grandparents, and I just kept thinking about how it would either be really hard to hide my hands, or they would just look awful, so when we were walking around the village a few weeks back getting errands done, I went into the nail salon and asked if there was anything that they could do to sort them out.

When I was going for the appointment, my partner asked how long I would be so he knew whether to try and keep the baby awake for me or to do bedtime solo, and I told him I had no idea. I even had to Google it on the way there as to what the type of nails I was getting done were since I had no idea. I had never had a manicure before so I had no clue about any of it. I didn't know how often I was going to need to get it done so they're alright for the wedding, or how much it was going to cost, but I knew it was going to be worth it so I didn't have to feel like they were ugly as hell and something I needed to hide on my wedding day, and I was right.

The finished nails are not something ridiculous or obvious, but they are a significant improvement, so much so that I  couldn't stop looking at them and kind of wanted to take the photos we had missed out on when we got engaged, but at the same time I don't want to feel like I'm trying to rewrite history just because I like something about myself now that I didn't like back then, but like this I can keep them looking lovely and have them looking nice on my wedding day for the photos with our rings and actually any of the photos that we have taken for the day. It seems like such a little thing but it's the sort of little thing that means a lot and I'm glad it's another item ticked off of the to do list. And given the number of things we are doing in the next few weeks, including a couple of My Chemical Romance gigs, I'm kind of proud that I didn't go for something crazy like black or red polish that would have been a lot more obvious!! 

The Unfinished Nursery,

Whilst I was still pregnant, I kept seeing photos and videos of people who were due at around the same time as me, or just before, or just after!, having finished their child's nursery. At the time I was naively thinking we would have plenty of time to sort it when we moved, then when we moved and I was basically useless for anything it was thinking that we would have time when he arrived to get the nursery done before he moved in there. Now when I think that the only thing I think  is about the bit in Billy Elliot where the dance teacher says 'The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow. Fat. Chance.'

This isn't to say that nothing in the nursery was done. The cot was put together well in advance and we had an over the cot changing mat in place as well as the obligatory IKEA changing table. There's a slight difference in height which makes a big difference to my back in terms of pain and thankfully the separate table is better for my back, because the over the cot one has had to come off now he's sleeping in there and I'm not picking it up every time he needs a change, because he needs a change a lot...

We got an IKEA cabinet in there as a second wardrobe, sorted out the first wardrobe and have changed it around a few times too depending on where we were up to with different things we were trying (like having to have the wet bags handy when we were still using reusable nappies), but the walls are still white, the wallpaper is still half torn down and the carpet is still full of marks and splashes of things that happened before we bought the house.

Our nursery is far from picture perfect, and it's actually far from functionally perfect. There's a few steps between the nursery and the bathroom, and a long way between the nursery and the sink in our room, so any messy hands take a while to get clean. It's also a long trek through the majority of the house in order to get to the bin with any bags of nappies. Honestly I have told my partner that I would love to put a sink in there, which wouldn't be too hard really, but it's not something we're going to do immediately. The thing I would love to do immediately though is put something of a very small slide tube down from the window... and then park a bin under it. Maybe it's just me and having something against the Tommy Tippee bin that Amazon seem to think every parent wants, but I don't like them and there are some things even scented bin liners can't fix or help. On those days, I wish it was possible to just throw everything straight out of the window into a tube that passed down right into the outside bin.

The problem with this, of course, is a lid, and the fact we live in the country side and near a river so foxes, rats and other rodents... 

I don't think the nursery will ever be 'finished' until we are done having kids, and therefore done having a nursery in our house at which point it won't be the nursery that's done, but our nursery era, partly because of how we both are and our need to reorganise, but also because our son is young and developing and that constant growth and change means what he needs from the room is changing and evolving. We have to change things to keep him safe, move things so he can get to and use them, and move other things because he's either past them or bored of them. Some things are there waiting for him to be ready for them and some things are just stored because we don't need them anymore, but we're planning to, or at least hoping to, have another kid at some point, so we need to keep them somewhere and ideally not forget we have them!! 

I Felt Like Such a Bad Parent,

Maybe this is unique to the messy disorganisation that is ADHD parenting (though I suspect that it's not given that sleep deprivation can cause ADHD like symptoms) but there have been a couple of occasions where I have felt like a terrible parent because something that should have been in the nappy bag just wasn't there.

There have been two occasions where we've walked out of the house without baby bottles. We had the baby milk, but just no feeding bottles, and both times the reaction was just to go and buy new ones, because it was the simplest solve (and yes, I know there is an inherent privilege in being able to afford to do that, as well as sheer luck that our son accepts a bottle that is widely available) but the most recent one was worse.

We went through the routine of kid gets grumpy, kid needs changing, take old nappy off after finding a towel, because relatives don't have changing tables (not saying they should by the way) only to find that the stack of nappies we keep in the changing bag wasn't there and there were, in fact, none. First reaction - do family still have any of the overnight pants of the toddler? No, but we might have swim pants? Cool. Whatever will do just to make sure the car seat doesn't get soaked in pee on the way home. Except they weren't there either...

Eventually the answer was the same - go out, buy more, bring them back, no stress, or no more stress at least - except that Tesco had run out of the right size ones in a brand we've used before, and out of all the right sized ones in fact, so instead, to Lidl! We've never used the Lidl nappies before and I'm not sure I would again. It's not like they leaked... I don't think they did anyway... but they feel kind of on the thin side. Yes, okay, they're Eco and hypoallergenic, but I have no confidence in them to hold up to one of Tiny's mega wees, and he does them a lot. He can pee out of nappies that I have a lot more confidence in, so I'm going to stick to what we know works.

One thing I remind myself of though when I triple check the bag for the thing we forgot last time, or when I tether his teething toys to the pram so he can't throw them away never to be seen again is that I'm only human. My partner is only human. We're doing our best and sometimes we get things wrong or we forget things and that is okay, partly because it has to be, we are who we are, and we are both very tired, but also because forgetting a bottle isn't going to break our son, or make him hate us, or be the reason he doesn't do *something* with his life. It's a momentary annoyance, and when it has really, really mattered - like when we were on the allergy milk you can't just pick up anywhere - we were fully on top of it, because there wasn't another option. It was hard, it hurt both of our heads and I'm glad we're back at the stage where if we forget things, we can pop into Boots or Tesco or Asda or wherever and just grab the things we need that we forgot. I am also glad we're at the weaning stage as well though, because little guy being able to eat something other than baby formula makes some things easier, even though it makes other things harder! 

He Graduated,

I know it's something I have previously railed against, though whether on this blog or not I can't remember, but I'm using the word graduated for my little man even before he's left university with a degree. I guess I've got into the if you can't beat them join them camp, where kids graduate the NICU, nursery or pre-school etc and anything else we can think of before an actual graduation.

What am I talking about specifically? Little man has graduated from the Snoo.

When I bought that thing there were a few people who thought I was crazy for spending several hundred quid on a used bassinet, and I'm sure that my partner was one of them, but it was something I knew that I wanted and it wasn't worth anyone arguing with me. We saw it working before we took it home with us, and actually I was pleasantly surprised by everything that came with it for the price - two sleeping bags in each of the three sizes, anti-colic legs and about four mattress covers as well as the dust bag for the whole thing, and all for around a third of the price of just the bassinet by itself brand new. It wasn't just that it felt like a bargain, but it felt like an opportunity to sleep more than we would without it and I firmly believe that we got that from it. It was so important that it even came with us on Little Man's first holiday to Yorkshire, but that was mainly because it was what he was used to and he had already fallen out with the bassinet by then so we weren't really too excited to see how he reacted to a travel cot.

When the midwives visited us, and the health visitor, they were all a bit sceptical, and some were more keen than others to be open to the idea, because when you say it swaddles the baby and restrains them that sounds pretty scary, but it's just that they're "clipped" in so that the motion of the bassinet doesn't move them too much. It plays them white noise, it rocks them and it "listens" for them being disturbed. If it can settle them back down, great, and if not, it stops and it notifies your phone to say it's stopped, which worked well as a baby monitor when he started sleeping through the night and going to bed earlier, because we didn't need to be perfectly in hearing range. We could actually go out into our garden!

But all good things come to an end and at six months, a certain weight limit or when the baby can roll, they need to come out of it, and Little Dude is now rolling, so out he had to go. It was also kind of important to me to get him used to the cot before we go and see My Chemical Romance at the end of the month because he can't come with us sadly (yes, I would have taken him, as long as he had his ear defenders on) so will need to be babysat, and I wanted that to be as easy as it can be on all of us. 

The little guy isn't yet six months, though that's coming in a couple of days, but he is rolling and had taken to kicking the crap out of the end of the Snoo, and I wasn't sure how well it would take to that. 

It's only been a few nights and it's not been perfectly plain sailing - he's gone from sleeping through the night to a couple of wake ups, but that happened before he came out of the Snoo so was not solely down to the change - but he's still sleeping pretty damn well and it means we get our room back, the Snoo can retire to the loft (once all of the sleeping bags have been washed) and we're moving towards our next milestone, which is either sitting or crawling.

And I get to feel bad that the six month mark has rolled around so quickly that we've STILL not decorated the nursery. I can kind of understand why people do it before the baby arrives now, because I feel like I blinked and these six months have gone by...

Nappies,

I don't know if I am behind on this or not, but recently I realised that despite a lot of effort into being super prepared for the whole life of nappy changes etc, we messed up and were running out of nappies in the right size. Now, I've been a bit obsessive in terms of making sure that when the little guy moves up a size we have something to move on to or move up to as it were, but when you're not ready to move up to another size putting on something too big is just bulky and uncomfortable. Now, we were in an okay position because if all else really failed then we would have been able to use the reusable nappies we had originally planned on using full time, but we've done the reusable nappy thing and I found it too difficult to keep up with the changing and the washing and the drying etc which comes with them, which is why we stopped using them.

Anyway, obviously we're not stupid, so when we were getting to the point in the stack of nappies where it was touch and go of how long they would last us, my partner suggested going to Costco for a box, but it's not near us at all, and the amount of money saved on a box of nappies would be less than the amount we spent on the fuel to get down there, especially since it would have been a rush after work, so instead my partner went to Aldi. I told him to get the size that we needed, because if the baby is a size 2 in nappies, they're a size 2 in nappies, right? Wrong.

When I looked at the nappies we had in the house, which were a few different sizes across different brands, I realised that each different brand seems to come up with their own different sizing. Little one was still a size 2 in Costco nappies and could wear a 2 in Pampers, but also fit into a size 3 in Pampers, is a 3 in Mum and You's and needs a 3 in Mamia Aldi nappies as well, so I had more nappies in the house that I thought I had which fit him, but it wasn't until I was putting him into the Aldi size 2s that didn't fit that I realised that they didn't fit him. Now that we've been able to get to Costco for the nappies we use the most, I've also realised he's not going to be in the size 2s in that for long either though and I'll be surprised if we make it to the end of this box, because he seems to be going through a growth spurt right now.

There seems to be a big thing at the moment about whether or not some nappies are day or nighttime nappies according to the picture printed on them, and I honestly hate the fact nappies seem to be getting more and more complicated. I kind of regret not sticking to the reusables for longer, but then they weren't as easy as I wanted them to be, and now that baby has started weaning, it means that changing poop nappies, or rather cleaning poop nappies, is even more messy than it was when he was breast fed, on formula, or mixed fed.

One of the other reasons this is such an issue is because babies don't get weighed all that often. The health visitors and midwives come and weigh them at the house in the first few weeks, but then the six month visit is something that can happen over video chat, so obviously they don't weigh them then. I considered getting a scale, but it's just another big thing that I would have to store in the house which I really don't need. The best I can do is get on a scale holding him, then put him down and get back on the scales and take one number off of the other in order to get a rough idea, but it's not brilliant and given that postpartum is a rough time for me, my body and my weight, getting on the scales regularly isn't exactly doing me any favours on that one. Basically, every size change is a best guess, just like the change of size of clothing is a guess, because he really is a little one for his age, though at least most of the clothing runs to practically the same size or at least a lot closer than the nappies do! 

The Christening That Went Wrong,

When our son was born, my partner and I had always intended to get him christened, not because we were regular church goers ourselves (we were not) or even that anyone in the family is, but most of us describe ourselves as some form of Christian and so it felt important to bring our son into that as well as what some people see a christening as these days; a good reason to get everyone together to meet the baby.

Honestly, little man's christening was the first time a few people had met him and that was a really lovely experience for him, for them, for us getting to introduce him, but because of the church we do now attend with him, it was also a really lovely event because the Reverend has kids herself and she knows how to not only allow kids to be kids in church, but how to include kids in a service so it's not just that they are tolerated, but that they are very much loved and welcomed in the service.

I remember when I was younger that church could often feel stuffy and long, and it was something where we sat through it and got on with it and were moaned at or stared at if we wriggled, giggled or were anything other than statues effectively. I think it's one of the reasons I enjoyed being part of the serving team in church, because it gave me something to do, and I'm better if I'm occupied. Whether it was carrying candles, ring bells, swinging an incense handbag (I know that's not what it's called, but it's what it looks like, so that's what we called it) having something I could do, and it being something I was SUPPOSED to do was really helpful, but obviously you can't do that with very small children, can you? Turns out, you can!

The Reverend had my four year old niece and my friend's six year old come up and help her prepare the baptism water by splashing in it as she was praying over it, partly to keep the sound of the water in everyone's minds, and then when we were praying at the end, she used bubbles to represent our prays, and told us to think of the pop of the bubble being that that prayer was heard by God... and so the girls were there to pop the bubbles, and it kept them engaged, it got them involved and it brought even more joy into a very special day.

You might be wondering then, why it was the christening that went wrong...

Well, as far as I have ever known, it's not the sort of thing you send out a formal invitation to, but one of the biggest problems from that is then there's no real RSVP tradition, so when a caterer or venue asks you for numbers, it's like trying to pick a lottery number. We didn't want there to be masses of food left over, but also didn't want to have invited people to come and celebrate with us and then the food be like, two quarter sandwiches and half a sausage roll each because we had massively under estimated. As it was, we guessed the numbers about right, except for that on the day quite a few people came down with sickness bugs, and it's not even like they were all people who would have given it to each other (in each family, yes, but each group doesn't know each other) and it's not like they're from the same area where it could be something in the air or something in the water... 

What didn't help was a number of people in both of our families have hearing aids, and whether they weren't turned up, weren't turned on or the batteries were out, I don't know, but it meant that a lot of people were missing different announcements, whether it was that his Godmother was ill and couldn't be there (but the Reverend said it was fine and she was still his Godmother), where the toilets were (so someone was looking for the toilets in the toy corner) or a few other funny things which I'm not going to embarrass people with, it made it a bit of a comedy of errors at times.

I know some people might think it strange that we had our son christened before we get married, but it was something we wanted to get done (or maybe it was something I particularly wanted to get done and my future husband just went with, because he knew it would make me and members of both our families happy) and I figured I could use it as something of a dress rehearsal for myself and my son ahead of the wedding. As in, if I wear something white or cream or light in colour, is he going to puke on it or poop on it. I was organised, too, because I even had a spare dress in the car, and multiple outfit changes for baby (he had one outfit for the morning church service which was a Pooh outfit on purpose - if you know, you know, a cream baby grow for the Christening service which was what my brother wore for his - and I waited until the last minute to put him in it since the Pooh outfit didn't work - a baby grow that's designed to look like a baby suit for the party afterwards - God bless you Ted Baker, that thing is adorable! - and a spare for in case there were multiple accidents) and the only one that didn't get worn was baby's spare, because he was sick on my first dress, but I hadn't practised sitting in it either, and every time I sat down the neckline at the front rose and tried to throttle me. I tried remembering to move the back of it slightly as I sat down, but it was a bit on the short side, so there wasn't a lot of spare space to do that, so getting changed was also a comfort thing in the end...

One of the great things about having it as a trial run was being able to trial some of the sweet treats we want at the wedding - which was ace because they went well - including a version of one of the cakes, which went down a storm. I know as someone who bakes I should be more willing to spend the hundreds it costs to have a "proper" wedding cake, but my future husband doesn't much like cake, and I'm not much of an icing person. Also, I despise fruitcake. Even it touching another cake is enough to ruin the other cake for me, and traditionally the top tier of a wedding cake is fruit cake and it is saved for the Christening of the first child. Well, the christening already happened, and we did have a similar cake, so I guess we don't need a fruit cake!! (Yes, I did have a proper sh!t eating grin on when I decided that one... Some traditions in weddings are fine, but that particular one can suck it.)

It wasn't as though I was the only one that little man got with dribble or anything, because he caught his dad, too, and in the clean up left him looking like he'd missed when he went for a pee, but that taught us both something, I think. We need a cover or an apron of some description when holding the baby on the wedding day, there's no such thing as too many muslins (there is never such a thing) and the baby isn't going anywhere near my dress until we've had photos done.

As things go, it could have gone a lot, lot worse and it was a day of love and joy like it was supposed to be. Little guy slept through almost the whole thing, but that's what he does... football matches, rugby games and now his own Christening including when he was getting water poured on his head... and it was better than a screaming, crying, fussy baby. Everyone got to see him, see how much he's growing and smiling and laughing and learning, and he was fully and officially welcomed into his church family, including getting his first bible which has the cutest illustrations to help him follow along.

Rings on Her Fingers,

In complete honesty, I never thought I would be a fan of breastmilk jewellery and, I can't remember if I have mentioned this before, but when I was coming to the end of my pumping journey, I decided I really wanted to get a breastmilk necklace, because it was a long, hard journey and I was really proud of myself for how long I managed to carry on. It was difficult, but it was rewarding, and whilst it wasn't what I had imagined it to be before Little Man was born, I wanted the necklace to honour that journey. It even has his initial on it in a little charm made of my milk, which is gorgeous.

I've always understood the concept of inclusions of ashes, or hair, particularly when it's a person who has passed away, because at least it is keeping a part of that person with you, and it's the same with pet fur. I don't think anyone gets the kick particularly when it comes to inclusions of dried flowers, but maybe I'm wrong? 

I watched a reel this morning which was about a ring made with an inclusion of a different kind, and my initial reaction was ew. It was a ring which included a sample of sperm. Surprisingly the comments were not mostly ew, and I wonder why that is my initial reaction, but then the story behind why it was made does make it make more sense. I think the fact that my partner and I didn't have to have any medical intervention to have our son makes me feel differently about it, because that particular ring was made with a sample of sperm from the couple's IVF journey, and so... right, I can't think of any better way to put it than to be a bit vulgar, so we're just going to have to go with it.

When I was getting my breast milk necklace, it was made from milk I had expressed, or pumped if you prefer, to maintain my supply but after I had a drink (an alcoholic drink...) so I couldn't have fed it to my child. It was in a bag marked as bath milk only that I was keeping in case he had any issues like eczema, but,  touch wood, we're okay on that front. Had it not been that, I'm not sure how I would have felt, because I struggled to pump the amount I did for my son, and it might have felt selfish to have taken any of that for making jewellery. Had I not breastfed at all, and only expressed milk in order to make a necklace, again, it likely would have felt weird. 

IVF as a medical journey often means that men have to... express themselves? (My head is screaming at me to just say rub one out instead of trying to be delicate about it) to have testing done or to provide genetic material which will be used in the creation of embryos. Inevitably, it's an act of love backed up by science and a whole lot of hope to make it possible for a couple who have struggled to have a child be able to realise that dream, and there is a lot of power in immortalising that and I think acknowledging that meaning and that journey changes things.

Over history, jacking off onto someone or onto the image of someone has been about power, control, humiliation and things like that, and I think there are effectively scars on, let's call it societal memory for lack of a better term, that mean we have a gut reaction of urgh, jizz, bad, or maybe it's just like, urgh, bodily fluids, gross. I can understand the perspective of 'making jewellery from any bodily fluid is weird' and the cool thing about it is that this most of this stuff doesn't scream that that is what it is. It's a quiet and personal tribute. Obviously that's different when that gets shared on social media, because at that stage a poster is either inviting opinions or often trying to inflame opinions. The problem I have, and the problem I saw in my own reaction, was the differentiation between a tribute to breast milk that was produced to nourish the baby, and sperm which was surplus to requirement to make the baby in the first place, that was already expressed and used in a lab, so would have otherwise been discarded. 

If it was something where a person was made to wear it, then I think that would be obviously very different, because of the aforementioned issues in history where the intention behind it has been very different, and I think if it was supremely obvious that it was what it was - I don't know, like a sperm shape on a ring or something - it might be different, but since it's a quiet tribute which looks much like any other inclusion ring, it's probably not something that needs a whole lot of noise, but when the maker posted it on social media, it obviously creates a conversation, and there will always be accusations that they are doing it to be divisive, because that's what gets views and comments and reactions which keep the cycle going. Ultimately, it's not something like Megan Fox's engagement ring, where taking it off will cause pain and damage, and instead it feels like a nice thing to do with IVF byproducts, which can be another really difficult debate.

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago when I saw the video originally, but juggling being a mum, keeping "on top of" house chores, getting our garden de-nettled etc and every other thing we have going on at the moment, trying to get it finished and posted has been more than a challenge! Which is also the reason it's not being posted on one of the days I would normally try and post a blog. It's not that I have anything against Thursdays, but aiming for Monday, Wednesday and Friday sometimes seems more realistic to me, even if it's not so much at the moment.

The Path to Saying 'I Do' Part 5,

I fully appreciate that some people are distrustful of AI and some people just plain hate it and there are a lot of good reasons for that. I do, honestly, especially because I don't think there should be a debate about the fact that it's use should be able to get us to the point where we have more time for our passions, rather than less, or rather than the AI effectively doing our passion projects for us, like when it creates artwork, but...

When it comes to weddings there are a lot of people who have started wanting to do a lot of it themselves, whether because it works out cheaper or because it gives them a lot more creative control or just control generally. And I get it.

When we started planning our wedding, I was kind of aware of the fact that there were going to be all of these little bits of things which would crop up that we hadn't thought of or hadn't known about, but I also had a bit of a general idea of how much things might cost. My future husband, God love him, thought that the price we had from the venue was a package price and we'd have to get a suit and a dress (his dress is gorgeous... KIDDING) and rings, but that other than that it was sort of a plug and play thing where it was all done for us, and it has shook him how much there has been to do. (And I haven't even made him do most of it.) 

I think he was aware that wedding invites weren't in the scope of what the venue did but I think he was of the opinion that they couldn't really be that expensive, could they? And I was like, yeah, it says wedding on it. Whatever price you're thinking of, add a zero to the end and you're probably closer to the figure than you were with your first guess. It was like the conversation over the pram all over again. I looked into a few different options, but as some of them were going in the post and I didn't want two 'tiers' of invites, we wanted them to be flat and as few sheets of paper or card as possible. We were also still trying to sort out with the venue about the menu so just asked about allergies and not food choices at that stage, but a lot of places that I was looking at wanted to do an invite "bundle" with an RSVP card to physically send back, an "info sheet" and a menu options card... It was all getting a bit out of hand, so thankfully I used Canva to do our own and do them our own way.

Now, I've always been more autistic than artistic (it's fine, I am ND, I can make that joke, and I do, regularly) I was pretty impressed that I chose a design I liked that was completely the wrong colour scheme (although one I'm wishing had gone with our venue, because I looked at a burgundy suit over the weekend and liked it - not for me!) and changed it, then managed to change the design for the back of the invite to make it a bit more simplistic, but still on theme and cute, so we could pile a bit of info on there without it looking cramped or cluttered, but when it's come to other bits that I want to mirror the invites, I'm sad to say I just don't want to mess around with them the same way, and I just want to press the AI button and say do this next bit, whatever it is, like that, so it matches, and then it poofs and does it, but it's not working out that simple.

I'm not asking for rocket science, I just want a template for *one thing, or another thing, which I'm not going to put because I never quite know who reads this and they might be coming to the wedding...* but it keeps saying, nah, I don't want to do that, do it yourself. And then I want to scream. I mean, yes, I can do it myself, but I don't want to and I thought the whole point of AI being there and "making our lives easier" was that I didn't have to, but it seems that there is no such luck on this for the moment, so I'm just going to have to keep plodding on with it and hope it's done sooner rather than later... 

8.5.26,

There is a significant thing about today that I only came to realise a couple of weeks ago, and it made me happy, and it made me sad.

 

Today is Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday; that's a lot of candles to fit on a cake. Like many British people, particularly the animal lovers, I do have a lot of love for Sir David. His book in the Little People, Big Dreams series is one which I sought out to buy for my son as opposed to one of the ones we've just kind of ended up with... It's also one of those which I have made a point of reading to my son, as opposed to some that I've left on the pile and we'll get to at some point. All this is to say that today is a day of great celebration because it is the centenary of an icon, effectively, but today is something else to me, too.

Today would have been the 100th birthday of my Grandpa, Jim. My grandpa Jim was my favourite person when I was a child. I've got a photo of a chubby little baby me sat on his knee on the Santa train, grinning my head off, probably because he was making me chuckle. We watched football together, even though I later decided I didn't like football - maybe it was because he wasn't there for me to watch it with anymore. He had a love of flat caps, old cars (or as he called them, cars), Man United, Frank Sinatra and Lancashire. He learnt German and told stories about World War 2. He served in the Navy, worked for P&G and pottered about in the garden. He had blue eyes, a cheeky smile and a soft voice, and I miss him so much.

When I was six weeks old, he went into the hospital for a second bypass surgery. He had had the first one ten years before, and the type of surgery that it was, at the time, was expected to last for about ten years, so what I was six weeks old, he needed it to be done again. My mum took me to the hospital with her and when my nana went to go and see if he was okay for visitors, Mum waited in the waiting room with me, and the next minute he was at the door, having walked down the corridor to come and see his granddaughter. I wasn't his first, I wasn't his last, but in the eleven and a bit years I shared with him on this planet I got to spend quite a bit of time with him and one thing I know is that it wasn't enough, but no amount of time ever would have been.

After he died, I wrote my first poem. It wasn't something I was asked to or told to write, but I sat and I wrote it, and we read it for him at the funeral, because it was just a kid trying to tell her grandpa how much she missed him already, and I have spent the next two decades and more missing him. I wish he had been there to see me go to college, and then to university, moving to London, graduating... coming back from London... learning to drive, meeting a man that reminds me of him in subtle little ways it took me a while to see, having my son, and later this year getting married... But especially meeting my son.

My son is named after my grandpa. It was a decision I had made myself a lot time ago, and it's a decision I'm glad my partner was okay with. I didn't want it to be his middle name or anything, but I wanted my first son to be named James so he could be Little Jim, Baby Jim, whatever nicknames, but he would share a first name with his Great Grandpa. I didn't know I was going to be raising a little blue eyed smiler who liked football and cars, but I love that he shares those things with his dad (not the blue eyes - that sort of skipped a generation) and that they're things he has in common with my grandpa. It's a different football team, but they both supported local football clubs, and by the time my son is old enough to drive he might not get a choice in the fact that cars are electric (though his dad will hopefully still have a couple of classics on the road including an old mini) but the main things, the main themes, are there. My son's already being raised on stories about how wonderful his Great Grandpa was, and that'll continue from both me and my mum, but it does mean that whilst I'm happy for Sir David, and his family, upon his 100th birthday, I'm going to spend the day feeling just a bit sad, too, because I wish Grandpa Jim was here to share it, and that he could spend today with my son. 

Grey's Anatomy Doesn't Feel The Same Anymore,

I have loved Grey's Anatomy for so many years, since I had to try and convince my mum to let me watch it (I was kind of sheltered at 12, okay?) and whilst I could have a moan about how only having the M left from MAGIC and even then, not all the time, makes it not as good, but honestly, I love it. I've loved the offshoots of Private Practice and Station 19, I love the political side of it... I just love it. I cried when Eric Dane passed away because he was so incredible in Grey's and I don't think I could have watched him in anything else and not expected him to be one of the Dirty Mistresses, but I put myself on a bit of a ban of watching medical dramas whilst I was pregnant, so no Grey's even for comfort watching, no Casualty or ER or This Is Going To Hurt or Bodies, because I was stressed and scared enough without adding fuel to that particular fire. 

In the first few weeks after the delivery of my son, I wasn't really watching a whole lot of television anyway, because I would have just fallen asleep on the sofa or fallen back to sleep in my bed, because I was, like all or at least most new parents, exhausted and trying to learn how to function, but you would think over 4 months down the line I would be able to lift that ban now? Well, not really.

Whilst I'm sure there would be a lot of people who would look at my situation and call me lucky, I did experience a level of birth trauma that I'm finding it hard to navigate. Whilst it wasn't the whole thing of being rushed in for an emergency C-section where the surgeons are racing against the clock to make sure the baby, me or both of us are not in danger, it doesn't mean it was easy, or an experience I want to repeat, and there are a lot of times where I feel like the situation I was in, the stresses and worries and circumstances, basically robbed me of the birth that I wanted and the impact that that had, especially early on, was huge, but it means that watching women in labour on TV programs is hard, and watching storylines about people experiencing complications is even harder. I know it's worse at the moment because even though our little guy is sleeping pretty well for a still pretty small baby, I'm not sleeping properly and I'm not a hundred percent sure as to why, but lack of sleep always means I have more of a hair trigger for things like this, so I've been having to ask my partner to mute things or skip through scenes, because I just can't cope with them right now.

It's the sort of thing that people tell you gets better with time, and I honestly hope that it does, but I think it's not just time, but distance, and distance requires not poking a wound, even a mental one, whilst it's still fresh and open and healing, so for now, I'm trying not to poke it by staying away from things which remind me why it hurts. 

Wouldn't It Be Great If IKEA,

I'm going to start this by saying I don't agree with the Lancashire Hot Pots on this one and I neither fear IKEA nor dislike it, in fact, I love it. I know that not everyone likes them, I know some people see them as just a cheap furniture pusher and I'm sure that some people are devastated that the entire MALM range is going to be going soon, even though they already axed the best colour (one of the previous oaks that was a textured veneer and just generally beautiful) partly because it's been around for 24 years (I'm not sad enough to know that without looking it up - it was on the wall of IKEA when we were there last) and it's hard enough when an entire brand goes pop and you can't get it anymore, let alone when a business makes a decision to move on from something that has been a staple for that long. 

I've been irritated with them before, because they do something like make the best plant goujons you've ever tasted and then discontinue them, or make the plant balls a bit too meaty so I have a half panic until Paul reassures me that they are the plant ones, he checked and he watched them make my food (he's a good egg), and when the Warrington one decided to slim down their menu for some reason and they weren't sharing that reason because it was after they finished the kitchen refurb and they dropped the rice bowl, it boiled my piss, but the recent salve to that has been a return of the rice bowl and another deal for super cheap food.

I've also seen some amazing things in IKEA like nursing groups in the cafe, they've done a pub* quiz and all those sorts of things that make it more like a community hub than a shop and I love that, and I love the feeding area for babies that I've used as a pumping area more than once. There's a lot that I like about IKEA, even if the Tetris game of getting things into a small car is both laughable and infuriating, the names are a dyslexic person (me)'s worst nightmare and there needs to be a lane for dawdlers because I just want to push them onto the nearest sofa so that they are out of my way. (I wouldn't but the thought crosses my mind on a more than semi regular basis...) I feel similar in the Trafford Centre, but there's less soft landings for people there.

So what is my latest IKEA related gripe? I like the new blue Billy bookcase. In fact, I love it. I love the green Kallax, too. I love the wonky nature of the shelves being different widths and things, but you can only have it in green and the green one is only in wonky. The blue Billy? No height extension, no drawer for the bottom, no doors at all... and let's face it, colour matching is hard to impossible, and because of the nature of what IKEA is, it's not going to look the same if you vinyl wrap or paint your own at home, so it's cool and it's "highly customisable" but not highly enough really. If you want a desk on a Billy, it has to be a white one, if you want the drawer, it has to be a white one, if you have non-standard ceilings... options are vastly reduced. I know, I know, it's mass produced and it's cheap and it's not meant to be custom furniture and you'd pay a lot more for something that is, but just imagine being able to use it like a pick 'n' mix, even if only on the website, and going here's the materials, here's the styles or patterns or whatever you want to call it, and then being able to get multiple height extensions for the Billy bookcases if you have high ceilings, because as long as it's mounted to the wall, the engineering of one versus two shouldn't be complicated at all. I'd love to be able to get blue ones with a drawer at the bottom for little man's toys, a couple of opaque doors at the top and glass doors down the middle to mean that my books get less dusty when they're sat on their shelves, but there are no blue doors and there's no drawer in the brown walnut that I also think would look quite nice.

We had talked about getting a carpenter in and getting something done in the front room and I think what we would be looking for would be very similar to what I've described above, but as I say, it would be more expensive, and we can't do expensive until after the wedding, because until then, well, we have a wedding to pay for, and weddings don't come cheap either!

What We Don't Know,

This might be a little all over the place because I'm working on very little sleep and trying to get it typed up whilst watching over my little boy in his bouncer, and also eating my lunch, because nothing teaches you to multitask like becoming a mum. Or a parent in general really, but when I think of it in terms of myself I always think of it in terms of becoming a mum instead of becoming a parent. Maybe that's just me?

I realise there is a privilege to being a parent these days. I'm not talking about the privilege of a relatively easy journey into being a parent and whether infertility rates are going up or we're just hearing more of it because people are more open about it, society is more accepting of discussions about it and because social media means when you've seen one video about something you see ALL OF THEM, but the privilege of the fact that when something seems... off?... you can do a quick search on Google (*other search engines are available even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes) or go to specific places such as communities on Reddit, forums on Peanut or similar apps for parents or even the NHSs own website(s) to reassure yourself that everything is fine or find information about what to do next. I've said a few times that these things aren't perfect, but then all babies are loveable little individuals, they're all different and none of them come with an instruction manual, so I get that most of these places are just full of people doing their best.

That being said, research is done with an idea in mind of what we don't know; it's a specific question being asked and hopefully answered whether it's a quick Google search, hitting the text books, medical journals with case files of things which have happened before or work in labs where there is a particular scope or question and the research is the journey to finding out the answer. So what happens if you don't know what the question is? Or what is you have what you think is an answer, but it's wrong? Well, nothing happens, which I think is why I love Tim Minchin's Commencement Speech when he says (I'm paraphrasing slightly) that opinions differ from arseholes in that, whilst everyone has one, yours should be constantly and thoroughly examined, because it's true, and also because it's Tim Minchin so it's funny. Unfortunately though people are very often only dispossessed of their erroneous facts and opinions when they're mocked for holding them in the first place, or upon being forced to be because they have been proven wrong, and honestly, it seems a little harsh. Is this a tangent? I promise it is not.

Recently I met up with a group of other women, all of whom have children, but ranging from my own at under a year, to some whose children are in their twenties, so they're probably closer in age to when they will or might become grandparents than their own experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and early parenthood, but the great thing is there is a universality to the experience of parenthood, even when there are so many divisions between us and there are some things you can only understand as a mum or a birthing parent (I know the two are not synonymous) or a non birthing parent, or a working parent, a single parent, a twin mum, a c-section mum etc. Even within those groups you'll have divisions, whether it be elective or emergency C-sections (reluctant C-section mums like myself) and there are obviously a lot that can intersect as well, which can further unite and divide us depending on where we fall.

I think I've previously mentioned - or perhaps I just wrote as part of my I'm distracting myself from the monotony and boredom of waiting for something to happen in the hospital - that when I came across a video on social media that stated that when you have a "month long period" after childbirth, it's not that, but it is partly because your body has a dinner plate sized wound where the placenta has detached from and your body needs to heal it and that comes with some bleeding or something that looks like bleeding and partly because your body is doing a bunch of things to go back to it's pre-pregnancy self (or at least your uterus is, or is aiming to). 

One of the ladies I was with mentioned she didn't think you bled with a C-section, but you do, because even with the best surgeon, they can't repair the wound from the placenta instantly and they can't do everything else to heal the body that the body does for itself. She then asked if it was when you were breastfeeding that you didn't bleed, and no, you do, and you can actually bleed more, because all the clotting that your body has to do as part of that healing process can be interrupted by the hormones which are needed for breastfeeding. Thankfully, I have seen enough information out there that says you don't need to go into the hospital about the bleeding unless the clot are bigger than the size of a lemon, and let's face it, you're going to remember that because it feels pretty shocking - lemons aren't small!! - but the whole experience is pretty shocking. I remember I knocked my belly somehow, it might have been whilst putting on one of those support belt things because my scar was tender and my back was still painful, and there was this gush... And I thought I had really done myself some damage, but no, it was completely normal. 

It sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory, but I often wondered when I was going through pregnancy if the reason you weren't told about certain things which happen or the frequency with which they happen was less to do with inadequate messaging or not knowing how to reach the right people etc and more to do with not putting anyone off of having a baby that wants to, because generally birth rates (I'm just talking in the UK here) are lower than previous, although some recent records show a slight, very slight, uptick. Given that fertility rates have been dropping (at least in what I read from 2021-2024) and people are having smaller families at a later stage, anything else which is liable to make more people reconsider having children is probably seen as a bad thing.

That being said, and it might be because I'm a thirsty sponge for information, I generally think that more information is better, and even if a person is never planning to have children, can't biologically have children or whatever their situation, more people understanding pregnancy symptoms and conditions like Hyperemesis Gravidarum, severe morning sickness (because it can be severe without reaching the level of HG) and pelvic girdle pain to name only a few, there might be a little more compassion and understanding for pregnant people. Granted there also might not be, because there are people who simply believe that pregnancy is a choice and if you make the choice it's your problem to deal with what you get with it, but I'm choosing to be optimistic about people's ability and inclination towards compassion, partly because I don't want to think about the issues which are still ongoing in America where choice and pregnancy are a very problematic conversation for other reasons. 

The Path to Saying 'I Do' Part 4,

Something I have never quite got my head around is people like me, who barely do their hair in any other way than scraped back into a messy bun or a ponytail, rarely wear make up and aren't much for getting false nails done going ahead and going against all of that for their wedding day. 

Look, I get that whole wanting to look 'your best' for the day and wanting to look nice for the photos and all that, but at the same time, I wouldn't want to be walking down the aisle towards someone who barely recognised me or someone who I barely recognised. It's almost like if my fiancé decided to get laser eye surgery the night before the wedding (I know it's not that quick but work with me on this one) or wear contact lenses. It's not that I've not seen him without his glasses on, because I have. More often than not he goes to sleep before me and obviously doesn't wear his glasses, and has normally taken them off for a while before going to bed whilst getting ready to go to bed, but the picture of him in my head is wearing glasses, so I would be pretty confused if he wasn't wearing them. Or if he decided to shave his beard off the night before or the morning of the wedding, I would be pretty confused.

I've been debating over whether or not to dye my hair back to ginger, because I've been so lazy over the last two years that I don't think he's ever actually seen me with my properly ginger hair, and if having a little one to run around after is going to mean I'm continuing on that lazy streak (or rather won't have the time for doing it) it may be the last time for a long time I actually have ginger hair, and is that going to be strange when there's photos across my house of my husband and some ginger bride? Is that going to confuse my kid? I don't know, but I'm sure that if I was wearing properly done make up - you know, when people go the whole hog and book someone to do their make up and style their hair properly and all of that - I think it would confuse my kid, both on the day and in the photos later.

It's probably going to be another thing that is assumed to be a money saving effort - hair dressers and make up artists are expensive! - but I am fully intending to do my own hair and make up, but it's not about the cost, it's about wanting to look like myself. For one thing, my partner isn't a big fan of make up. For someone who has always been a lover of red lipstick, that's been a bit of an adjustment for me, but I realised pretty early on I like kissing him more than I like red lipstick - if that doesn't tell him how much I like kissing him... nothing. ever. will. For another, make up 'trends' have never been my thing, and I've never in my life worn fake eyelashes and don't feel the need to start on my wedding day. There are very few times in my life I've ever worn foundation, so it seems crazy to me to pay someone to come in and put my mascara on, draw on a bit of eyeliner and put on some lipstick for me. The only thing that makes me consider it is that I struggle to get eyeliner even most of the time. 

And yet with all that being said, I am tempted to go and get my nails done, if only for the fact that I'm sure there will be a few photos of hands, and I'm not the biggest fan of my son's newborn photos where my hands are in them because I still  bite my nails and it's not just a little bit or a polite nibble on the corner of the thumb, but a full on, aggressive, I bite them, I tear them, I go too far and then they hurt kind of thing. I'm trying to leave them alone from now until the wedding but I've been saying that since January and we're not getting very far... 

To some extent, it feels like another area where people can just get carried away...

One thing I am struggling with at the moment is how 'me' I feel in my dress, and I'm not sure if it's just because I didn't do the whole bridal store try on a bunch of dresses, find the right one and cry, because I found one I was in love with that wasn't my size and couldn't get it in a larger size, the fact that my body is a larger size than I'm comfortable wearing, or if I just bought my dress too early and this is a natural consequence of having too long to stew on it, but whatever it is, that's a decision I've made and I'm not revisiting! 

The Path to Saying 'I Do' Part 3,

Realising the date that this would be published, I think it'll be understandable why it's been pushed to an hour later than they normally are published!

I'm not going to lie, there is so much dumb... stuff... out there that you can buy for weddings. I'm not even just talking about on Shein and Temu and Amazon; so many places are guilty of it. And what's even more... ridiculous? Is that it leeches across into FB marketplace and Vinted because people will sell the ridiculous crap that they bought AND DIDN'T USE for someone else to then come along and buy to not use at their wedding.

I've already had a good moan about the twee language used on invites, but you can get tags and things to reserve chairs at your wedding for immediate family or specific people, or whatever really because apparently, this is a thing we need to do these days. Why is no one being taught that front rows are for immediate family or the bridal party? Why do we need a seat tag that says Reserved and why does it have to say 'Kindly reserved'? Can I get tags for my wedding that say aggressively reserved and have the ushers wearing sumo suits? If you sit in the front row and you're not immediate family or the bridal party, they're going to tackle you off the chair and scream THIS IS RESERVED at you? Why does it feel like we're approaching the point of having a seating chart for the ceremony as well as for the dinner? Seating charts are enough of a hassle without having to start stressing about the ceremony as well! 

There's also these things of, right, I don't know what they call them in the UK, but I think the American name is incidentals baskets? Our venue has actually put in the contract that we can't have them and honestly, I appreciate not having something else to do. I realise that having things like a pack of plasters or blister plasters - women in heels will know - or paracetamol is good. Maybe even having a spare can of deodorant, but then I'm an asthmatic who worked in a building where aerosols set off the fire alarm so I'm not a big fan of using deodorant in a public bathroom. But then people put other things like eye shadow, mascara and other bits in so that you can touch your make up up... Have you never heard of pink eye or conjunctivitis? They had one of these baskets in the ladies when I went to the last Night of Writing Dangerously, and it was cute and lovely, but honestly, I'm not sure anyone misses them at weddings when they're not there. I can't be the only person that carries any make up that might need retouching with me or carries spare paracetamol and plasters if there's even the vaguest chance I may need them? Surely it's just about being prepared, and why are we babying our guests? 

Along the same lines - flip flops. I get that some people are really going to appreciate a basket of flip flops or hotel slippers, but people could just wear heels that are a bit less high and therefore more comfortable over a longer period or bring their own flats. Hell, bring your own trainers. I have some gorgeous heels for the ceremony and photos, but I'm not even sure I'll wear them for the first dance. My red Converse (which I already owned) will be making an appearance and I would just encourage everyone else to do the same thing at my wedding. Bring your trainers, don't bother what it looks like, because I'm not buying a crap tonne of flip flops in multiple sizes in case anyone's feet hurt. I'd say sorry, not sorry, but I'm not even pretending to be sorry on this one.

The next thing is glow sticks that then say 'Let Love Glow'; I'm sorry, it's a wedding, not a rave, so it's not really my vibe. Especially because they're another thing that gets bought and then sold on and I'm not a hundred percent convinced anyone uses them. Wedding bubbles are the same because I just see so many of them for sale.

I think one of the biggest things that occurred to me whilst I was planning this wedding was that I haven't been to many weddings and a lot of the things that people try and say you 'have to' do are a bit more of a thing for large weddings, for one, and for another, there are a lot that are very Americanised. Now, as a person who didn't have a baby shower or a gender reveal, I think it's easy to make a guess how I feel about things being very Americanised... 

I'm not saying we're not going to do anything people don't think is too cutesy or ridiculous or anything like that. I decided we were having a pick and mix because I found a bunch of apothecary jars in Aldi for next to nothing, and given that both my fiancé and I are quite into sweets, it seemed natural to choose to do a pick and mix, partly because anything that doesn't get eaten can just come home with us... but there is plenty that we're not doing, and honestly, I would be surprised if the people closest to us (aka the people who are invited) are actually surprised and I would hope that they're not disappointed, but either way, I don't plan on learning any lessons from it, because there won't be a next time.

Reflux in Babies,

I feel like there needs to be some sort of checklist created to try and make life easier for parents of babies with reflux, because there is advice all over the internet, and there are all sorts of old wives tales, and then there are the GPs and the health visitors who seem too afraid to suggest anything, in case they get it wrong.

There are plenty of products on the market that claim to help, whether it's specific formula milk, wedge cushions to keep baby from being a hundred percent flat or the somewhat ridiculous Baby Up, that is basically a baby carrier on a high chair to hold the baby so the parents don't have to. That might seem like I'm being a bit dismissive, and maybe I am, but I have a baby with reflux, I do know how hard it is, but even if it didn't have a three hundred pound price tag, I don't think I would want to have one to hold my baby, because I know that sometimes when baby's feel unwell, holding them isn't just about keeping them upright, it's about them feeling better because they need you close to them. They need the skin to skin that hospitals and midwives are teaching, because it's about comfort.

When I raised the fact that my son was struggling with reflux, which was partly in response to the health visitor saying he was dipping from the line of where he should be growing, her best suggestion was to visit the GP, and then when I visited the GP the best thing that they could suggest for a baby with constipation and reflux was to give him Gaviscon. Which makes babies constipated. Because that is clearly logical. At the time I didn't have any other ideas, so I just had to go with it, especially since I didn't have any data of when he was throwing up or refluxing things back or whatever they wanted to call it, because it also gets called posseting and exactly what you call it depends on what it is, but it seemed that no one was interested in investigating what it was, even when we ended up in A&E several times.

You might be thinking, okay, well how is a checklist going to help? 

If we had had the data we would have known he was more likely to reflux when he was over a certain amount of hours for a bottle, which meant a lot of them were coming back on his early morning feeds. At that stage, yes, Gaviscon might help, because it settles the stomach acid that's built up over a longer period, but that wasn't every time. We weren't sure whether it was only the formula he was on or if it was also when he was drinking breast milk. As we realised it was far more common with formula we chose to change his milk, but just went for a different 'normal' milk rather than the special diet ones, because they all say about being used under medical supervision, though the doctors didn't seem too interested in us moving onto one of these.

Around the same time we were giving him Gaviscon - which originally cleared the problem of constipation and then made it a hell of a lot worse - we started giving him Infacol, and it took a while to realise that whilst he got better with both, that was mainly due to the Infacol, so we were able to figure out that a lot of the problem was wind, but he's a terrible burper without the Infacol and only slightly better on it. Sometimes, he'd burp when we were burping him, but he would burp with such force he'd bring back a load of milk anyway... 

So checklist: 

Have you tried Infacol? 

I would say have you tried Gaviscon, but it doesn't stop the reflux, it just stops the pain or discomfort associated with it, so I don't know why they prescribe it. How about treating the problem, rather than the symptoms?!

Have you tried a different formula?

There are a lot of different formulas on the market, and at the time that all of this was happening for us, there were a few recalls going on and that made me anxious about what formula to give him. When we initially left the hospital, he was on Cow and Gate, but then that was recalled, so we changed to Kendamil, but that didn't seem to agree with him, and this was what we were only supplementing him with a small amount. We made the decision to go for Mamia, because when I looked into it there hadn't been a recall on Mamia formula, or at the very least it hadn't been recalled because of bacteria contamination. When we looked to change, I read that Mamia formula was most like or very similar to Aptamil, so Aptamil was obviously off the table, and with the fact that we weren't sure if the issues with Kendamil were the bottles or the formula in the early days, we didn't want to go for that either, so we decided to stick to the pre-made formula bottles by Cow and Gate, because he seemed to be mostly okay with those. When we managed over a week without spit up with those we bought the powdered version (and then had a spit up incident with the pre-made stuff), but at least he was actually gaining weight by then.

Have you tried keeping the baby upright?

We tried this so much, because it was all that we could do. We have wedge pillows in the pram, in the Moses basket, in the bassinet and one that moves all around the house in order to make sure Little Man was never fully flat. It helped a little, but at the same time we had to keep everything covered with muslims and over covers because he was still spitting up. 

Have you tried either caramel or baby rice to thicken the milk?

This is basically what special formula is anyway, but you can use it in breast milk if you are combination feeding or feeding exclusively expressed milk. It's also something you can then try without committing to a whole box of formula. It gives the opportunity to try it for a few bottles and see if it makes a difference. We never got to this, or we haven't got to it yet.

Have you tried specialised milk?

Have you tried a different brand of specialised milk?

Honestly, I think I would probably stick to the same brand when changing onto a specialised milk, but if the issue was the brand of milk, that wouldn't help, would it? So surely the next bit is to change to a different specialised milk, whether this is called comfort or reflux, because it changes across different brands. 

Have you tried allergy milk? 

There's a few ways that this is done, whether it is goat's milk or something where the lactose is stripped out, in order to try and eliminate the idea that it's an intolerance or allergy to lactose. I already knew that if we got here, I wouldn't be able to do this for his breast milk, partly because it takes a bit of time for it to clear from your system, so I would have been pumping milk we couldn't use for a period of time, I couldn't produce enough milk to fulfil all of Little One's needs, but also because I've tried being vegan a couple of times for Veganuary and I sucked at it. 

To be honest, I'm not really sure what comes after this. I know that people say 'they'll grow out of it' or 'it'll get better', but it's hard to sit and watch your child not be able to keep the only food and drink that they can have down. We've had issues with dehydration, we've had issues where I know he's hungry and I've not known what to do, because he can't keep things down, and we've had issues because I've felt nothing but guilt for the fact that I can't do anything. Even when the only thing I can do is give him small bottles of food every forty five minutes to an hour, I have struggled, because without setting constant alarms that then drive me mad, I can't keep track of time very well, and I can't stop thinking about how unsustainable some of these options that people suggest are, either for me or for when Little One goes to nursery.

Things That Changed When I Decided To Stop Pumping,

I was going to set this to post today at lunch, like I do for a lot of these now, but I'm kind of glad that I held off, because it all got a lot more complicated than I had originally thought that it would be when I found a clogged duct yesterday and then woke up with pain and leaking this morning which changed the process of getting to the end of pumping after I thought I was already there. It's frustrating, but that's life, I guess.

So I decided to stop pumping recently and you would think, hey, it just gives you one less thing to do in a day... It doesn't just give me one less thing to do, it gives me plenty less things to do. Instead of having to think about how I'm going to plan my day around pumping, trying for every two to three hours because that's the optimum, that's what you are advised to do, planning how much time I needed for pump time and all of the other bits I felt I needed to do because I was trying to build up my supply from being a chronic under supplier, even if I could only get to being a 'just enougher', that was what I was aiming for, and if I could have gone a bit over that and started freezing milk for when my little boy goes to nursery in a scarily short length of time, amazing, but that felt like a dream. Stopping pumping meant that I could take a step back from all of that and just be present with my son. Not to mention I could go back to sitting in the front of the car when I wasn't driving, because one of the easiest times to plan to pump was when we were in the car for anything longer than fifteen minutes, and although I bought myself a nursing cover, they kind of suck, so it was easier to sit in the back letting it all hang out because we have privacy glass on the back windows.

It's not just about being able to be present with my son though, or the ability to not have to plan the way I was trying to, but being able to drop washing storage bottles and sterilising storage bottles, and all of the pump parts as well, of course. It's the not having to try and organise when I need to replace pump parts, or think about charging the wearables when I can't use my 'big' pump. It's not having to think about, plan out and share the system of organising the storage bottles so that we know when things were pumped, that they've been stored correctly (least amount of time at ambient temperature as possible, but definitely less than six hours, and then less than six days in the fridge) and they're used in the right amount of time. Honestly, sometimes the storage of milk took over half a shelf in my fridge and that's not even because I was pumping at high volumes, because I wasn't, we just had more small storage bottles than big ones, so anything over five ounces needed a second bottle. I know a lot of people use bags and then it's easier and more natural to write onto them - you can write the date, the time, anything you need to know like the days I needed the strong pain killers because of the surgery or the back pain I was feeling, I could add that onto the bags, but to me, bags are a real faff.

Tangent, but I think that unless you are freezing your milk, bags just make like a little bit difficult, because they don't stand up well, especially not when you are pumping smaller quantities like I was in recent times, but they also tend to get milk in the seal at the top which is just annoying, and trying to organise them in the fridge is just a ball ache. That's just me though. Since we were using everything out of the fridge we found using chalk pens on the top of the lids of the bottles and then washing the date off each time we were washing the bottles worked pretty okay, except that I tended to only take one storage bottle upstairs for overnight pumps - and yes, we did get a mini fridge for upstairs to keep pumped milk and little man's overnight bottles in, don't hate the idea until you've tried it - they often had two dates on, which meant we were really only getting about five days of storage out of them in the fridge... but back to my main point...

Stopping pumping also changed things in terms of my wardrobe. Before I stopped pumping I as back in the size of jeans I was wearing before my pregnancy, and that might seem obvious because I think I have mentioned before that I didn't gain weight during the pregnancy because of the sickness and vomiting, but the shape of my body did change and I've had to accept that whilst I'm back in my old jeans, they do fit a little more snugly than they did before. Being back in my old size meant I was able to think about getting back into other things I hadn't been able to wear for a while though, like my Oddballs boxers, which pre-pregnancy, and even for a while into my pregnancy, were the most comfortable thing I could wear. They didn't go too well under the bump, had no chance of going around the bump and then when there was no bump anymore, they didn't go well with my C section scar because unfortunately their waistband sits right where my C section scar is.

Now, that's not a pop at Oddballs, because the scar sits where it is as a matter of design by surgeons who perform C sections. The "modern" C section is done in a way that hides the scar in a place where you're less likely to see it, and it sort of "fades into" the fold(s) under your tummy, you know, the little sort of pooch most people get following pregnancy, but that means that most underwear is going to be really uncomfortable for the first few weeks and for some of us, getting out of the granny pants that are about the only thing that don't irritate it can be difficult, because there's always that fear of causing more pain and irritation in a place that has been experiencing a lot of pain and irritation. I don't know what the advised timeline is for when you can start wearing your waistband over your scar again, but I do think it's really different for everyone and some people will probably take a little skin discomfort to feel like themselves again, and others would rather have big bloomer style pants for longer rather than risk irritating the scar again. 

When I stopped pumping I was able to think as well about being able to wear a normal bra again, instead of a nursing bra or a pumping bra, and don't make any mistake, they are two very different things. So I was able to go back to wearing normal bras, or potentially my Oddballs bralettes, and I was also able to go back to wearing normal T shirts and normal jumpers. Prior to giving up, pumping meant that I had to wear something that was either a nursing top, or a spaghetti strap which wasn't great when it was in the middle of the winter, or a big baggy jumper so that I knew that I'd be able to get it out of the way and either get the pump parts underneath it. When I say, get it out of the way, it was more often just take it off entirely, so stopping pumping meant I didn't have to think about stripping off in my house, in my car or anything else. I didn't have to think about whether we had parcels arriving, because some of the parcel delivery guys walk through our garden to deliver the parcels, right past the window of the room I sit in with the curtains open and everything hanging out. It was less limiting in terms of being able to have people over. I no longer have to think about stressing out over not pumping, feeling uncomfortable wearing my wearables with people over, or having to secret myself away in another room and hope no one comes to find me, so that I can get the pumping that I need to do done and stop my breasts from feeling swollen, full and uncomfortable. It's even more important for being out of the house, because I don't have to think about how long social engagements are, having to go sit in the car in the cold half way through - I have set the alarm off on the car multiple times by being sat in it with the engine off and the doors locked so no one well meaning comes and opens the door whilst I'm pumping or attaching or detaching pump parts. I don't have to think about storing milk that I've pumped on the way, in the car or anything like that, though we did manage a successful trip up to Murrayfield with me pumping on the way, in the car park and in a few other places, but we took a camping fridge and had it plugged into a battery pack, to make sure it wasn't just dumped, because undersupplies have a right to be more precious about our milk than oversuppliers. I realise this is something that gets contentious, but it's true. Even if you as an oversupplier are really generous and donate your milk to NICUs or other mamas, it's not the same. I realise that I'm only coming at that from a perspective of an undersupplier, but that means I have had the experience of the mum guilt of not having enough or being enough for your child and it being something you have no choice in.

Not having to think about pumps and breast milk and all that sort of thing just means I can focus more on my child and him meeting people in my life and my partner's life, them enjoying meeting him and all the little things he's started doing like smiling, and learning to laugh and grabbing for things. Okay, I still need to plan out feeding things, like having his bottles and the Rapid Cool clean, or how many bottles he will or might need when we are out of the house, or when his naps should be and how I can get him down for a nap outside of our home and his usual routine, stopping pumping gives me less to think about and far less logistics to manage.

I have been quite specific about the language I've used when talking about stopping pumping, partly because I have to keep reminding myself that I am neither giving up not quitting pumping, I'm just stopping. Quitting and giving up make it feel like a very negative thing, and I'm trying to focus on everything that is positive about it. This was not an easy decision to come to. It was a really difficult decision that I had to make, and to some degree that I wanted to make. I knew that it was coming for a while before having to make the decision, and I wanted it to be something that I wanted to make the decision on instead of it being something that just happened to be me, because so many things during the birth and early days with my son felt like they just happened to me rather than being my decision. It has been a really upsetting decision to make, because it has made me feel inadequate but I'd also been feeling inadequate from pumping for a long period of time because I've just simply not been able to produce enough milk for my son. Part of that is because of my ADHD and the limitations of that, with overstimulation, time blindness and other issues. The ADHD was the reason we were pumping entirely in the first place, too. In the end，it was something where breastfeeding just felt too difficult and too over stimulating, especially when people say it's natural and that means that there can be an expectation that you get it and your baby gets it from minute one and it's easy. It is far from easy. Sometimes, when the ADHD symptoms weren't too bad, I could do it, or if my son was sniffly and ill, and I knew my body needed to get the message that he wasn't well to produce milk that would help him feel better, I would fight through the issues I had with it to do what my son needed me to, to do what was better for his immune system, but as a daily thing, I couldn't do it. It felt like another demand I was having to manage and that I felt incapable of managing.

Pumping allowed me to make sure my son got as much support for his immune system as I could give him, whilst also meaning my partner could give him a bottle if I couldn't do it, or someone else could if we just needed to get some sleep. Whilst we didn't manage to get to the point I wanted to get to - somewhere between the 6 months weaning stage and the 2 years that the WHO advise - we made it three months, which is more than either my partner or I had when we were young (and we turned out fine, apparently!) and more than some friends we know, but not as long as others. We made it past two rounds of vaccinations and through the first few snotty noses. We made it as long as I was capable of doing it, and stopped when doing it was causing more harm to me than not doing it would cause to my son, and one of the biggest things I've realised is that I didn't know before we started how much it would take over my life, and I didn't acknowledge how much it had taken over my life until we made the decision to stop.