I am the second born in my dads first marriage, therefore, according to my dads colleagues, I am 1.2. My brother is 1.1, my half sisters are 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. That makes my daughter 1.2.1... apparently. Anyway that making sense or not, when I decided to attempt to write a blog, I thought that although my friends and family will obviously know who I am, when this thing blows up and goes global (hahaha), I want to remain somewhat anonymous, ergo the funny name. I've barely read a blog, I'm not a writer, I'm not witty... I can barely spell forgodssake, but as I was drifting off to sleep the other night, I started writing one in my head. It was one of those transient moments. When I woke up still blabbering on in my head, I thought, what the hell, why not give it a bash? 3 things were compelling me. 1. My 3 month old daughter, 2. My google addiction, 3. Curiosity (the cause of my google addiction) as to whether I had anything worth saying... So here goes nothing!
I've wanted to be a mother for as long as I can remember. I had a feeling it would happen a bit earlier in life, but I'm not complaining, I feel that the timing ended up being perfect. My husband and I had a good few years to be selfish and now we're ready to share each other with another little being. So without going into the complete history of us, here we have this amazing little girl who is absolute light of our lives.
As I say, I wanted to be a mother more than anything, so when I found out I was pregnant and all was going smoothly with the pregnancy, I had non of the usual worries about sleepless nights, dirty diapers (sorry Scotland, I know you hate me... nappies), crying, etc, etc. I had been around and looked after enough little grubs, that I had a fare idea of what to expect. I had plans for a very natural, medication free birth. All that was thrown out the window after six and half hours of labour, when 1.2.1 went into distress and I was rushed in to have a C-Section. After she was whisked away to the NICU and I was sent to a recovery room, I was too drugged up to really feel sorry for myself, so when I got to see her within the hour and she popped right on to my breast, I wasn't really surprised. The next three days in hospital went by in a sleepless blur. We got home on the afternoon of day four and after a wee feed, I swaddled 1.2.1 and put her down in her bassinet to nap. She went down no problem, and it was actually my husband and I that had to force ourselves not to go in there and pick her up to let her sleep on us. That was actually one of the hardest things I've ever had to do in my life, but we did it and a few hours later, we heard little grunting noises and realised she had woken from her slumber. The next 3 months were to fly by in this amazing, happy, predictable way. She'd sleep, eat, play and have a pretty sweet night schedule which meant I actually got a ton of sleep, more so than before she was born! 1.2.1 turned 3 months a week past Sunday, and BAM! our world has been turned upside down.
She's got pretty smart in her short wee life you see. She really enjoys our play time and cuddles, so when she started going down for her naps, within 5 minutes she was wailing. I'd go through to console and cuddle her and she'd have a giant grin on her face. Now, you must understand, I've been devouring all the baby books I can get my paws on and I had been living with an "Angel baby" according to "The Baby Whisperer", and I'd been quite structured, not strict, but not letting her demand feed either. And this had been working out pretty damn well. I was in the middle of reading "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child", and it looked like 1.2.1 had been doing all the right things, and we were both getting plenty of rest (one night sleeping from 6pm to 9am with only one very sleepy feed!). I hadn't changed anything, so what was going on? Was it that we had come back from a Thanksgiving vacation? Was I missing her cues? Was she teething (god forbid!)... since she was also not feeding the same, was drooling like a maniac and eating her fists like they were the best thing since sliced bread, I was beginning to think the latter. She was being more fussy when awake, and I was really beginning to think we'd been lulled into a false sense of security, and we were now going to have a terror on our hands. Not only would she not go down properly at her naps, she was waking in the night several times, just so she could get a wee cuddle and promptly fall back asleep on my shoulder. That's all very well and loving and good, but it's tiring when you end up only getting a total of a couple of hours sleep, when you're used to a lot more (most new mums will be hating me for complaining!). So anyway, long story short (kind of), I've been doing my usual googlemania and looking to find answers from real people, not so called "experts" or Dr's. I'm typing in "falling asleep on the breast" to see if I should change her schedule to that, even though every book under the sun pretty much says that is the worst possible thing you can do. One mother says that it worked for her, and all TEN of her children... well, bar one... but whose counting? That's seems pretty good odds to me. I try and change 1.2.1's schedule to see if that would work, but it was almost impossible to see through, cause it just wasn't working trying to flip it all around like that. I searched "3 month old teething", and yes, unfortunately it does happen and all it did was make me nervous. I searched "3 month old bobs on and off breast", that just made me more nervous as one of the reasons said that it could be down to teething, urgh. What to do? So it's been a week of trial and error for us. We're beginning to work it out with a little use of this and little use of that, but bottom line, we can only do what works for us and I try not to second guess myself too much, and just go with the flow. Even if it is a little more rocky than "normal".
So I will end my first blog entry with my Google search of the day - "How to write a blog"...if I was a "lol"ler, I would lol right now.
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