Am I Doing This Right?,

I have to admit, parenthood feels a lot like asking yourself this question a million times a day and being worried that the answer is no, though from what one of the health visitors or midwives said in the early days, the only truly bad parents are the type who either don't ask themselves the question or don't really care what the answer is. Naturally though it's something I worry about, because I worry about everything.

Particularly I'm worried about it at the moment in concern to weaning, because guidance about it is so all over the map, and some people will say you HAVE to start with purees and some will say you HAVE to start with baby led weaning (which doesn't mean no purees) and some people will tell you to just do what works for you and for the baby. Okay, fine, so he's just going to eat chips wherever we are then? Nooooo. 

We started purees early because my little vomit comet was forever losing his stomach contents and - like an idiot - I thought that purees would help him to maintain his weight even if he was puking milk everywhere, but it turns out that purees aren't really nutrient or calorie dense foods, so yes they would stay in his tummy better, but no, they weren't going to help him with his weight at all. That being said, he has moved up the growth charts since the point where we were told he was tiny and to look at him, it's obvious he's a healthy and growing kid. It's hard not to get concerned about the numbers when you go from growth scans where they are right on average, then they seem to drop off a lot, and then they're on or near the 9th centile line and then fall off of that. Now I understand that centiles are like if you lined up a hundred kids born on the same day at the same point and put them in order of weight or length or head size, but I would have thought that "normal" would be something like forty five to fifty five. I'm not sure why I chose that number, or those numbers, but I thought that, and it turns out that the anomalous, or extreme, numbers on that scale are actually 0-2 and 98-100 according to the allergy clinic. If someone had told me that six months ago it would have saved me a whole lot of stress.

Another thing that gets challenging with weaning though is how much do you give them? They're still little, they're still drinking milk and they have no concept of what a feeling of a full stomach is really, or that over eating leads to vomiting, so if you're completely led by your child that is sure to go wrong, isn't it? Well, yes and no. If they're turning their head away or refusing to open their mouth, they might not like something or they might be full, or they might just be having an off day, but you're the parent, so if you know that they've eaten double in one sitting what they normally do, you have to be the responsible bar tender and cut them off. 

Some of it is about persistence as well. Most advice says try giving your child something ten times before accepting that they don't like it. Personally I find that really hard, because chickpeas make little man cry, but also because if he's not interested in food it's getting thrown and if it's not something the dog will willingly eat (and I can then clean the floor of dog spit instead) it's trying to get it cleaned up myself, and that's either from the floor, from smeared all over the high chair or changing whatever clothes he's wearing because it's gone all over him... 

As if all of that is not enough, there is a window of time to move from just thin purees which are mainly fruit and vegetables where you're trying things out to textures. Things like yoghurt (or dairy free alternatives if, like us, yoghurt is off the menu), couscous, pasta, toast, soft biscuits, melty sticks, wafers, strips of food etc. Between eight and twelve months is apparently the absolute must to ensure that babies don't end up stuck on purees with a lot more difficulty moving on. Obviously this is caveated in terms of development, but that's the best window in terms of the average... And honestly, it's hard. 

The first time little legs tried couscous it was because I was having couscous, and I thought, well, the pouch he's eating today is a savoury one anyway so I can just pinch some couscous from my lunch, mix in some of his pouch so it has more flavour and isn't dry and we'll see where we get. There was coughing, there was wretching, there was a whole lot of saliva, but there were also smiles and grabbing for the spoon, so it's not that it was terrible, it was just new. We gave his melty sticks and wafers before he got his teeth through because I had read that they can help with teething, but things like toast and biscuits waited for the teeth to arrive to make sure he had the ability to cut through them and not end up with huge chunks in his throat. 

Even with a couple of teeth through and a few months of practice with purees under our belt, weaning is still a scary experience. It's fun to see how he reacts to new food and what he likes and doesn't like - spoiler alert, if it's not chickpeas, he likes it, at least so far - but given he already has an allergy to milk, it's nerve racking to worry he'll have another allergy and that could be more serious, and that's on top of worries like you have with any child that they could swallow something or choke on something and it becomes a medical emergency really quickly. I can give him a bottle and be bobbing around the room whilst he finishes it, but with solids, I have to be looking at him and making sure I know how he's getting on. I'm not complaining about that, because it's important to make sure he's safe and I know that, but it means another task I have to be switched on for and something else I need to fit into the day with everything else. And how many times do you do it? Well, you should be getting towards three meals a day. I have no clear concept of how to do that. Parenting classes focused on not shaking the baby, not how to get through weaning... 

That being said, I realise this slightly moan-y blog is coming from a privileged place.  Yes, he has an allergy, but it's one thing (granted which is in a lot of things and I've turned into a habitual packet reader) not multiple things which make it hard to use pre-made purees and dinners and mean you're cooking everything yourself, and it's not life threatening, because the after effects are unpleasant but not anaphylaxis. In terms of development, the little guy is doing well, so he's sitting up, trying to crawl, and doing all of the muscular things he needs to do for eating, and he's curious about everything. His interest in food is a really good thing (until I'm eating something with cheese in and need to defend it). The prognosis for his allergy is that it's somewhere between highly possible and highly likely he will grow out of it, and it's not an uncommon thing. 10% of baby's now have a milk allergy of some sort and I think it was something like 80% of those children grow out of the allergy. 

There is work to be done on it, because part of growing out of the allergy comes from working through something called the milk ladder, which manages exposure and builds tolerance gradually, but that is doable, and I do know that we're lucky in a lot of ways, even if I did just put my unsocked foot into a puddle of refluxed milk and that feeling is putrid.

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!! 

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! 

Bougie Babies,

I can't remember if it was just before or just after my son was born, but my mum and I were discussing changing mats and what she had when we were younger and what we have now - because these are the sort of riveting conversations that early parenthood brings you - and there's something I noticed...

The biggest thing that I have noticed when discussing with my mum and my in laws about what has changed since they had me and my partner as babies is that not everything that changes is an improvement.

The biggest thing that pointed this out was changing mats. I get that babies cry when they get put on the plastic covered mats that people are used to seeing when they're somewhere public, because they're cold, but there are a couple of good things about them, and the best thing about them is that they're so easy to clean. The other good thing is that they are a single item thing. IKEA have produced a replacement for them that is inflatable - which is good because wriggly babies don't bang their little heads on the sides of the table and hurt themselves - and covered in a towel material cover, which stops babies getting cold and means that they don't cry... AS MUCH! But the biggest issue? We own about five of these covers, because we have a boy, and boys like to pee when they're on the changing mat and it goes EVERYWHERE!, and sometimes I can't keep up with washing the covers as quickly as he pees on them or leaves poop-y bum prints on them. Maybe it's good work on the part of IKEA - making a product where I need to buy multiples of the covers for it to function as it should, because there is no way I could wash and dry just one cover every time I need it - or maybe the changed item isn't actually better than the old version, because the problem that it was trying to address isn't that big of a problem. Most babies will wake up when you change them anyway, so the mat being a little chilly isn't such a big deal. In fact, I was told by the midwives in the hospital to change the nappy before a feed because it helps to get the baby to wake up a bit and then they are a bit more alert when it comes to feeding time, which is most important if you're boob feeding, because it takes a bit more effort on the part of the baby.

Maybe the differences are more apparent to me because we have one of each, and instead of being as they were originally intended - one in the nursery and one somewhere downstairs so that I don't have to climb the stairs in order to change the little guy during the day - they are both in the nursery for reasons of that's where they ended up and then they've stayed because the table one hurts my partner's back and the over the cot one hurts mine. You'd probably expect there to be a massive height difference between the two of us from that, but there really isn't. Typically, I have the mat with the towel cover on the table I use, and I have to change the cover at least once a day, but twice is not unfamiliar and three times isn't unheard of, but sometimes mid change I have to jump the little guy, in whatever state of undress he is at the time, over to the other changing table and mat set, because the mess is just too much to deal with any other way. The great thing about the plastic covered one is it's a case of pick baby up, wipe mat down with a Dettol wipe and then some kitchen roll, and hey presto you're ready to go again, rather than pick baby up, remove cover, clean the base as above, then refit another cover - not a one handed job - and then get back to changing the baby. 

There are plenty of other products that have hit the market in the thirty something years between when we were babies and when we had our baby, and there are plenty of examples of things that make me want to bang my head against a wall, but there are also plenty of things which exist now that make my life significantly easier and I really appreciate them. Babies don't come with a manual, so anything which makes it a little easier to get them past the early stages is worth a coat of looking at.