One Thing I Hate In AirBnBs Is,

I think this pre-exists being a mum, but at the same time I think it was amplified by the fact that when we were away last week (or last week to when this is posted, because I'm writing it on the last night of the honeymoon having been drafting it in my head for the past half an hour...) in Scotland, in an AirBnB, our son was the most mobile he has ever been and he was expressing his distaste for being contained. He's very much used to having his bottle by himself and he kind of likes it that way, but he doesn't tend to have his bottles in a high chair and I'm trying to convince him to, partly because I think it helps him get into the habit of having a bottle and food, without having to do bottle in one place and food in another, but I digress... 

When my son was in the high chair, he would lob things off the tray table or anything that was close to him and he's got a pretty good arm...

So why does this make me hate AirBnBs? Well, that's overstating it, but I do get frustrated when AirBnBs have these Scandi style sofas with the legs and the bases that are six inches off of the floor, or other furniture where there is a large gap at the bottom, because when little man decides he wants to throw things, I have more places to look to find them and more places to look after the stay, before checking out, to make sure we haven't forgotten anything. 

It's not just AirBnBs, of course, but the last hotel we stayed in had divan beds and I still lost a knitting needle and had to go back and check all around the furniture, but I knew it was far less likely to have been under the furniture and missed rather than furniture which is easy to hoover underneath but also easy to push things under, especially when you're a few months old and you get your butt right under the furniture for fun.

We had an awesome honeymoon and really enjoyed the AirBnB we stayed in except for a few little personal notes like the frying pan was terrible which massacred the omelettes I tried to make for breakfast one morning, and the fact that the wood fired hot tub was frustrating because when I want to go in a hot tub, I want to go in it now, not in two to three hours when I've chopped wood, built a fire and finally got it going and loaded it up enough to keep it going whilst I'm in it. Oh, and midges but that's not the AirBnBs fault... They provided a travel cot so we didn't need to bring our own, brought a high chair so that we didn't have to think about that either, left some small supplies in the kitchen and even put roses in a vase, rose petals on the bed and a bottle of champagne to enjoy because it was our honeymoon, but even without the added extras, the place was just stunning, modern, quirky and yet well thought out, and they had cows.

I just would have loved to not have had my husband (Christ that's still fun to say) waiting in the car with the baby whilst I checked every room from lying on the floor to make sure we didn't leave anything too many hours north of our place to want to go back and get it... 

Insomnia Hits Different Now,

Before I got pregnant - God, that seems like such a long time ago now - I used to get really aggravated when people would tell me that I didn't know what tired was because I wasn't and never had been a parent. It honestly bugged the hell out of me. Now that I am a parent, it still bugs the hell out of me. 

Here's the thing. I've had sleep issues for a long time and when I was writing over one of the summers after I was in college, I got into this fabulous routine where I was going to sleep around 2am and getting up around 10am and I was wildly more functional as a person than I have been in a long time. All of a sudden I was getting enough sleep and getting through sleep cycles so I actually felt rested and it was just glorious, but it's a sleep pattern that doesn't fit in with work or with a lot of things and it certainly doesn't fit in with my son, partly because he is still working on the idea of a sleep routine...

Insomnia hits differently now because I used to give myself the permission to sleep more when I could, and I don't really get to do that as much anymore because my son doesn't always love naps and sometimes by the time he gets down for a nap I'm too awake to also have a nap, but also because the point where it becomes a problem and the point where I can do something about it have swapped now. If I realise I'm hitting the point of exhaustion where I need a solid sleep, I need to take some meds to help me sleep before about 10pm, but most of the time I don't figure out that I'm actually struggling until about 1am and then it's too late to be able to do anything, because the type of meds that help me sleep can leave me slightlu incapacitated which isn't an option when I'm the only adult who will be in the house for a few hours with my son and it's also a time when he is likely to be awake and need attention.

People told me that you find a new reserve of energy and you're able to get through the day and unless I'm missing something or that doesn't kick in until you go back to work, it's not happened unfortunately, and I'm worried that it won't, but I guess I will have to wait to find out... 

Parenting Fails,

I was recently talking to some other mums about parenting fails, and then it went completely out of my head until I had a corker of one today. 

The ones we were talking about are the moments that make you feel like the worst parent ever, like when the pram falls over, whether it be because you've attached things to the back of it (guilty) and miscalculated or something happens and you hit something the wheels won't go over, or kids just have a bit of an accident where they fall off of things because they don't know what gravity is or what heights are. Thankfully when the pram toppled over on me, I grabbed it pretty quickly, and could see little man was just hanging out because he was well strapped in and he actually thought it was a game...

Well, today I was trying to find out what little man weighed and the best way that I can do that is weigh myself holding him and weigh myself when I've put him down, so when I had weighed myself holding him I needed to put him down and the best place I could think of was to put him in his bath seat, because it was close by, and I didn't think about the fact that there is a dimple in the middle of the seat... which was full of water from his last bath...

So there's me pulling my kid out of his bath seat in a soggy sleep suit and a nappy that had been brand new five minutes before but was now soggy on the outside, so I had to do a full strip change on him, and because I couldn't strip him off in the bathroom I soaked my t-shirt getting him back to his nursery for a change. 

I don't know if this is just normal of parenting or normal of ADHD or normal of ADHD parenting or if it's just me being rather special because I have a bad habit of slopping yoghurt down my shirt because I accidentally tip the yoghurt bit of a Clusters too much. Hilarious stupidity is something I tend to do a lot of, though it's normally more things like falling over my own feet, falling over things I've warned other people about or forgetting to take a towel with me before getting in the shower and then having to do a mad, naked dash through the house whilst soggy.

The True Cost of Working Away,

When my partner and I got together I knew that he was working in the type of role where he might end up working away, but the company he worked for at the point wasn't really getting him to work away a lot, if ever, and we had a long period of bliss where it just didn't happen, and from early on we didn't spend a whole lot of time apart.

Whilst we have been together he changed his role, which was good in some ways, and not so good in others (money, good, commute time, baaad) and there was talk about a lot more working away than there has been and part of that has been because his manager is a legend, and whilst we have been "enjoying" Little Man's newborn era (only in inverted commas because there are days when it is really rough) has been taking on a lot of the working away because he missed out on a lot with his own kids particularly in the early years, and he wanted to try and make sure that my partner gets as much time at home with our son as he can. (I'm so glad I'm out of the super hormonal part of post pregnancy, because otherwise I would be a weeping mess on the floor every time I think about how kind this is.)

But it's not all sunshine and rainbows, and when I was around eight months pregnant, my partner was needed to work away and as it's his job, obviously he had to go, but I think it was only one night (might have been two - my memory is terrible at this point) and the easiest thing was just for me to go and stay with my parents, because the idea of being thirty ish minutes away by car in case something happened overnight was a bit too overwhelming, and he was going to be over four hours away by car.

Naturally I did all of the usual soon to be mother panic and freak out things like making sure my birth plan was written out, making sure my hospital bag was with me at my mums, making sure I could charge my phone so if I needed to make a frantic call to him in the middle of the night, I could, and he did the soon to be dad freak out which I believe involves making sure that the vehicle is always brimmed with fuel, because no one needs to be looking for a fuel station when they need to start a mad dash to the hospital. As you probably already know, the mad dashes were not required.

Our baby boy is getting on for seven months, so it's been a while since the last time he actually stayed away overnight, but there have been a few locations where he probably should have stayed, but there wasn't the budget and or he hasn't wanted to leave us, so instead he's done long drives on top of long days and been utterly exhausted, but at least been able to sleep in the comfort of his own home and we've been together. And he was more than willing to do the same again, but I was worried about him, because driving tired is awful. Drinking Red Bull or similar so you are not too tired to drive is awful. I know he's used to driving and I know he's an adult and he can look after himself, but I also know it's not just that he wants to be at home to see me and to see our son, but also that he feels like he needs to be here to help, because babies are tiring. Babies are stressful. Babies are such a blessing, of course, and I love that kid so much, but that doesn't mean it's easy. He's a great partner because he wants to make sure I have support, but I don't want that to be at the detriment of his health, his wellbeing or anything else.

You can kind of see the stalemate we sort of reached here... but thankfully I promised I would get help, even if it was during the day, either go down to my mum's or go and visit family and such like, and reminded him that we have people around I can call for backup if needed (not going to lie, it would have been hard, my pride would have been hurt, but I would have done it, because I would have accepted that I needed to) and I've got through it just like tons of other parents do, but what's the cost been? 

For one thing, we didn't know until the last minute if he was definitely going, when he was going or if he was staying over, so it could have been a week of very early mornings (I apparently wake up, say bye and roll back over with no recollection of this most mornings) and very late nights where he would be returning home after our son was already in bed, or to a cranky baby who has been kept up to see his dad. None of that seems great for my kid. Because of that, things like food plans have gone out of the window and whilst I've adapted, it's been a touch annoying to say the least. 

As many people have, we've been watching the World Cup matches together and him being away meant that our last match of actually being in contention for the Cup we had to watch apart. Now, he might have been quite happy with that because I'm not a particularly big fan of football, but normally he is my barometer for when I need to look up from whatever else I'm doing (only when we're watching on the TV) so I don't miss the important bits... I missed England's goal but saw both the Argentina goals...

Naturally him being away affects our conversations, too, because when signal is crap and he's on the way home we can just say 'I'll see you in an hour, I'll speak to you when you're home...' or whatever it is, but when the only contact we'll have to connect over is the phone, it makes those calls far more important, and far more frustrating when the signal is shocking or my auditory processing disorder flares up (which happens a lot and is why there are subtitles on my TV permanently). I tend to have calls on loud speaker, because I can do other things at the same time then and that helps my brain stay "in" the conversation, but then it means that my son can hear his dad on the phone, and he smiles, he looks around and then he can't see his dad, so he looks confused. Honestly, that was rougher than I expected, because he doesn't understand when I tell him Dad's going to be home in a couple of days. He's still of an age where if it's not in front of him, it doesn't exist. (And joys of ADHD, I have times like that, too.) 

Earlier in this blog there were notes of triumph, because I've managed things okay. I've had help, but my son and I have been fine. He's been eating fine, smiling, laughing, and gone to bed when he should do. I've got washing done and tidied up and generally felt like something of a functional human, which is incredible, but I've also missed the hell out of my partner and I can't wait for him to get home. And yes, I do know that there are a lot of people whose partners work away and some are gone for months at a time or some go and they're working in war zones. I get it. Or at least I get that I don't get it, partly because I know I'm not built for that. In a big way, to me, working away sucks, and I'm pretty sure my little boy would agree. 

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!