Battered, bruised, exhausted and that's just my ego. It's been exactly one week since I last blogged but it feels like a lifetime has passed.
This week has been a blur, a haze...It's been one of those weeks where I've been so tired that I put the butter in the microwave because I thought it was the fridge (that was messy); it's been one of those weeks where I've thought I need to take some annual leave from this job and thought crap! I can't; it's been one of those weeks that I've thought, I probably need to consider resigning and let someone better have a go only to realise, once more that, crap! I can't.
Baby-led weaning has turned into a game of Subbuteo where, for the sake of peace, I have become the goal keeper. Potty Training: Part 2 The Return of the Singing Potty has been even more stressful than last time because Bethan's bowels are constantly on my mind. However, the most tiring and guilt-ridden thing that has been plaguing me day and night for the last 7 days is this: I can't wait to go back to work for a break.
Only three weeks ago such a thought would have horrified me; I was kind of getting into that whole earth-mother vibe and 'livin of the fatta of the land' ;-). Now I'm thinking, who am I kidding? I'm far too neurotic to be an earth mother! I'm just going to admit it: 24/7 with my two beautiful children for 14 days, 18 hours and 36 minutes has been very difficult.
This pill is even more difficult to swallow because I know how bloody lucky I am to have them. When Bethan was a couple of days old fighting for her life in an incubator my mum said to me, "She's strong; you're going to be nose to nose with her". I was hysterical saying that even thinking such a thing was too much because she could die at any moment.
As ever, m'mam was right. Bethan is strong; not just physically but also strong of mind.
As I was on my knees on one of our daily sojourns to the naughty step this week, I looked up into Beth's water-filled blue eyes and her mottled face from the amount of frustrated crying and had a very vivid flashback of sitting beside that incubator and having that conversation with my mum. It was at that moment after looking at Beth and then James did I realise that I'd hit a wall and needed some 'out time'. Following this epiphany I've had many sleepless, guilt-infested nights culminated in the following assertion: I can't justify why I need to work; it just feels like the right thing to do.
Mind you, once I'd come to terms with this 'feeling' (for now at least), chez Hillier has been back to its completely mad and frantic self today.
Desperate not to miss our first swimming lesson after the holidays, I started getting us all ready quite early this morning. It came as no surprise that we were still stuck in traffic 5 minutes before the lesson was supposed to start (Note to self: Put a brown paper bag in the glove compartment. This will help with 'why are we on the drag again?' hyperventilating). Once parked, we went rushing into the private building where the pool is, started to frantically get ready until,
"Liz, why are we the only ones here?"
I turned to Rob and went,
"Oh crap!"
Oh yes; I'd got the wrong pool on the wrong week. Many apologies to the residents of Cardinal Lofts in Ipswich. We saw the security camera whilst swimming alone in your pool but what is an Alpha Mum to do when you're dressed for the party and have nowhere to go?
Showing posts with label weaning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weaning. Show all posts
Friday 15th February 2013
Last night was...
A SUCCESS in the Romantic stakes!
Initially I thought it would be as successful as Gwyneth Paltrow's 1998 Oscar speech. The 'fresh' peppercorn sauce, that was in a sachet, burst everywhere in the shopping bag. I found James eating the hard cat food which meant that he was coughing and spluttering everywhere whilst soaked in the cat's water as he had pulled her drinking bowel over (I'm convinced that baby James is either a. from the planet Krypton or b. preparing himself to be the next Usain Bolt).
However, the thing that made me cry, even more than Gwyneth did in 1998 if that's possible, was the fact that the two children slept for over 2 hours on Valentine's Day afternoon. Ordinarily I would be over the moon as it is extremely rare that I get two hours to myself on any day. I have already planned what I would do if I had a free two hours one afternoon...nothing! I would sit on the sofa, close my eyes and maybe, just maybe if there was time, listen to the afternoon play on Radio Four (with my eyes shut of course).
I spent most of the two hours I had free yesterday afternoon panicking. I was panicking because I knew that this would mean the children would not go to bed until later than usual which would spoil the romantic itinerary I had planned.
Following James' attempt to try baby-led weaning with a packet of Iams, I then panicked about forgetting what to do if I found my child choking. Then, I spent the rest of this free time reading the 'the new edition of 'First Aid for Babies and Children Fast'', analysing the 'What to do if your baby chokes' chapter. This was quite difficult because I was using Bethan's My First Tiny Tears as a model whilst trying to keep the book open. I suppose it would be 'Fast' if you were practicing with someone else. Finally, I found their website which is amazing. They have these short YouTube videos embedded on their website showing you what to do in a whole host of emergencies. So, for the final 15 minutes of my unexpected free time, I could sit down with a cup of tea and a Hobnob, watching what to do if my baby was choking, as many times as I liked on my laptop! I have now put this website as a 'favourite' on my tool bar.
The day was certainly picking up.
Ok, so we ate at 09:30 that evening and we watched Question Time after. In fact drunkenly discussing and having a heated debate on politics with my husband on Valentine's Day is almost a tradition for the Hilliers now. Except last time I got thrown out of the restaurant with it's 'special Valentine's Day' £45 per head a la carte menu (that didn't even include drinks) because I was rather loudly saying how much I disliked Tony Blair.
However, it is the fact that we love discussing politics and watching re-runs of the superbly Laurence Olivier narrated 'World at War', that Rob and I know that we are made for each other. We have been through so much together and are still passionate about the things that matter to us. Passion, hmmm...well, I was tucked up in bed by 11:15pm; desperately counting on my fingers how many hours sleep I would get before the children woke up. I missed the end of the increasingly annoying debate about who's to blame for the horse-beef meat fiasco but Rob stayed up to watch the drama unfold under the watchful eyes of David Dimbleby and filled me in this morning, over a cup of tea.
That's love, that is.
A SUCCESS in the Romantic stakes!
Initially I thought it would be as successful as Gwyneth Paltrow's 1998 Oscar speech. The 'fresh' peppercorn sauce, that was in a sachet, burst everywhere in the shopping bag. I found James eating the hard cat food which meant that he was coughing and spluttering everywhere whilst soaked in the cat's water as he had pulled her drinking bowel over (I'm convinced that baby James is either a. from the planet Krypton or b. preparing himself to be the next Usain Bolt).
However, the thing that made me cry, even more than Gwyneth did in 1998 if that's possible, was the fact that the two children slept for over 2 hours on Valentine's Day afternoon. Ordinarily I would be over the moon as it is extremely rare that I get two hours to myself on any day. I have already planned what I would do if I had a free two hours one afternoon...nothing! I would sit on the sofa, close my eyes and maybe, just maybe if there was time, listen to the afternoon play on Radio Four (with my eyes shut of course).
I spent most of the two hours I had free yesterday afternoon panicking. I was panicking because I knew that this would mean the children would not go to bed until later than usual which would spoil the romantic itinerary I had planned.
Following James' attempt to try baby-led weaning with a packet of Iams, I then panicked about forgetting what to do if I found my child choking. Then, I spent the rest of this free time reading the 'the new edition of 'First Aid for Babies and Children Fast'', analysing the 'What to do if your baby chokes' chapter. This was quite difficult because I was using Bethan's My First Tiny Tears as a model whilst trying to keep the book open. I suppose it would be 'Fast' if you were practicing with someone else. Finally, I found their website which is amazing. They have these short YouTube videos embedded on their website showing you what to do in a whole host of emergencies. So, for the final 15 minutes of my unexpected free time, I could sit down with a cup of tea and a Hobnob, watching what to do if my baby was choking, as many times as I liked on my laptop! I have now put this website as a 'favourite' on my tool bar.
The day was certainly picking up.
Ok, so we ate at 09:30 that evening and we watched Question Time after. In fact drunkenly discussing and having a heated debate on politics with my husband on Valentine's Day is almost a tradition for the Hilliers now. Except last time I got thrown out of the restaurant with it's 'special Valentine's Day' £45 per head a la carte menu (that didn't even include drinks) because I was rather loudly saying how much I disliked Tony Blair.
However, it is the fact that we love discussing politics and watching re-runs of the superbly Laurence Olivier narrated 'World at War', that Rob and I know that we are made for each other. We have been through so much together and are still passionate about the things that matter to us. Passion, hmmm...well, I was tucked up in bed by 11:15pm; desperately counting on my fingers how many hours sleep I would get before the children woke up. I missed the end of the increasingly annoying debate about who's to blame for the horse-beef meat fiasco but Rob stayed up to watch the drama unfold under the watchful eyes of David Dimbleby and filled me in this morning, over a cup of tea.
That's love, that is.
Wednesday 16th January 2013
Fed up of being ill and having no voice. Fed up of Rob seeming to be happy with this new status quo. Fed up with trying to explain to Bethan via hand gestures why she has been put on the naughty step. It's like Give us a Clue but with more angst and noise.
I'm most fed up about not being able to speak to my friends without a) It hurting or b) Sounding like Deirdre Barlow. So I've done the fatal thing in the desperate hope of hearing some adult conversation without having to verbally answer back and been reading through parent forums on some well-known parenting websites.
I can feel my brain screaming at my finger as it's about to click on the "what can I feed my child?" link: "DON'T DO IT!!! YOU ALREADY FEEL LIKE CRAP!!!"
(Side thought - I've often thought about what type of response I would get if I wrote, "well, I give my two LO (that's 'little one' in parenting forum speak) deep fried Mars Bar, chips, gravy and a side of common sense").
Seriously, if you are a first time parent and you looked at this link, by the time you've read the advice in the discussion which was about 10 pages long and involved about 50 mothers, you would think, "Right, I'd better feed my child nothing". Every food group or suggestion was undermined or came with a health hazard at one point.
I know the worries of weaning; especially when your child's lost the end of her bowel and you've been told by consultants that she might not ever do a solid poo or run out of Vitamin B12 by the time they are 7.
I credit Annabel Karmel with making sure that 99.9% of my daughter's poos are solid and admire how her own journey to being a paediatric nutritionist began. When I finally got to meet her at a mother and baby show, I started crying; I hugged her and said, "This must be how a teenager feels when they meet Justin Beiber". At which point the burned tyre tracks from the double buggy were evident outside the AK stand. Rob and the kids did one; they were nowhere to be seen.
I'm most fed up about not being able to speak to my friends without a) It hurting or b) Sounding like Deirdre Barlow. So I've done the fatal thing in the desperate hope of hearing some adult conversation without having to verbally answer back and been reading through parent forums on some well-known parenting websites.
I can feel my brain screaming at my finger as it's about to click on the "what can I feed my child?" link: "DON'T DO IT!!! YOU ALREADY FEEL LIKE CRAP!!!"
(Side thought - I've often thought about what type of response I would get if I wrote, "well, I give my two LO (that's 'little one' in parenting forum speak) deep fried Mars Bar, chips, gravy and a side of common sense").
Seriously, if you are a first time parent and you looked at this link, by the time you've read the advice in the discussion which was about 10 pages long and involved about 50 mothers, you would think, "Right, I'd better feed my child nothing". Every food group or suggestion was undermined or came with a health hazard at one point.
I know the worries of weaning; especially when your child's lost the end of her bowel and you've been told by consultants that she might not ever do a solid poo or run out of Vitamin B12 by the time they are 7.
I credit Annabel Karmel with making sure that 99.9% of my daughter's poos are solid and admire how her own journey to being a paediatric nutritionist began. When I finally got to meet her at a mother and baby show, I started crying; I hugged her and said, "This must be how a teenager feels when they meet Justin Beiber". At which point the burned tyre tracks from the double buggy were evident outside the AK stand. Rob and the kids did one; they were nowhere to be seen.
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