Ugh

26/10/10

OK, I am now heartily sorry about complaining about the lack of symptoms.... they have ARRIVED.

Bleurrrrrgggghhhhhhhh.

Not enjoying this at all. At least with the first one, I had that whole "wonder of being pregnant for the first time, looking forward to the unknown" kind of thing. This time all I have is feeling sick and having a toddler kick me in the head. And I know exactly what's coming: many more weeks of this. Fun.

Have just been to the supermarket, and picked up anything and everything that might stand a chance of easing the queasiness, including watermelon (win), apple juice, tonic water (pretty good), Tangfastics (questionable), grapes (usually quite reliable) and crisps. A lot of people advise eating dry toast first thing. How the hell are you meant to do that? When I wake up, my mouth feels like a badger crawled in there and died, so I'm pretty sure that dry toast is not going to help matters.

And The Baby doesn't care at all! Here I am, growing a little brother or sister for her, and all she can do is bimble about every morning being insanely jolly, while I retch fruitlessly, and just watch as she takes everything out of her drawers and throws it around.

It's going to be a loooooonnnnng first trimester.....

I'm Sure She Does This On Purpose...

So much for the phew.

The Baby, true to form, has decided not to capitalise on those few steps. She is doing a few now and then, but only very few. Apart from at nursery, where she apparently does it quite a lot, thus deepening my suspicion that they have her mixed up with someone else, and there is another set of parents out there going "But she's normally so good at home! I don't understand why she's so different for them!". So no real progress with the walking yet. It's like she was saying "Alright Mother, there you go, I can walk, will you please shut up and leave me alone now?". Which I won't, by the way. She has also taken to walking around on her knees a lot, which seems to me much more ineficient and downright strange than either just getting up and walking, or staying crawling, but who am I to argue?

We do have a new animal noise though, a very cute "grrrrrr" for lion. And sometimes cow, or bird.

On a seperate note, Husband and I are currently enjoying a blissful evening sans The Baby, who is staying with my wonderful parents. Although as I am on here, and he is on the Xbox, it could be said that we are not exactly seizing this opportunity. We have just been to Asda though. On our own! On a whim! At night! And it was genuinely quite exciting to do that. Oh dear.

Phew

Woo hoo! My child is not lame! She can do walking! Well, kind of. Yesterday, she took her first official steps!!! (Apparently, she had taken a couple before that, in front my mam's friends, but as no-one who was related to her witnessed them, they did not happen, therefore I did not miss them). There were only 3 of them, but still, how terribly, terribly exciting! And what a massive, massive relief. You can tell yourself a million times a day that it doesn't matter, that she will get there in the end, that every baby does things in their own time, but sometimes you can't help getting a teeny bit anxious when yours seems to determined to show you up in front of the parents of child prodigies. There was a part of me wondering if The Baby would end up like Michael McIntyre's 30-year-old crawling around the cocktail party (have you seen that one? Tis very funny. I don't want to like Michael McIntyre, smug-faced git, but I can't help it. I do.).
Anyway, knowing The Baby, I wouldn't have been surprised if those steps yesterday were the only ones she decided to do for the next 3 months (like the very short-lived potty triumph), but she's done it 3 more times today, so I'm feeling pretty hopeful.

So come on Baby, keep up the good work, and then just a few more words and maybe some animal noises, and then I can join the ranks of boasting smugmothers. Can't wait.

Oops...

14/10/10
Agh. Just had small panic when I realised I had hit publish instead of save on my previous retrospective new pregnancy post. Thankfully, I don't think I'm so important that someone would be reading my blog in those exact 20 seconds before I managed to delete it.

So anyway, parents and other family members have now been told, and also my yoga teacher, who looked slightly terrified when I said I didn't want to take a break from practising until I was 14 weeks (don't think she's ever taught a pregnant woman before, let alone a very wilful and stubborn one). 1st midwife appointment duly booked.

And yet I still don't believe it! Although I had been feeling a bit rubbish the other week, I now don't feel pregnant at all. I had just about every symptom in the book by 6 weeks when I was carrying The Baby (who definitely needs a change of title now, or things could get confusing), but this time is totally different. I feel tired all the time, but then I've been tired for about 15 months now, so it's kind of hard to discern if I'm any more tired than normal. I guess it's true what they say, every pregnancy is different. Which is not particularly what I want to hear, as I had a pretty nice one last time around and was kind of hoping I'd get that again. I always think that I'm pretty good at coping with things, but I'm beginning to think more and more that actually I've just never been tested....

Oh Dear Lord, What Have I Done?

7/10/2010
OK, so here is the first of many posts that I'm writing to be posted retrospectively, because, while it seems that I have managed to put many of my friends off ever having a baby, I have not done it to myself. Yep, that's right, I am having another baby. ANOTHER BABY!! What the crap am I doing that for? Well, mainly so that I don't have to spend my life being the sole entertainment for one child, and also so that if I have a row with the first one, or she decides to move to Australia, I have someone to take me to Tesco when I'm old.

Anyway, I'm about 5 weeks now, and don't really believe it. Apart from the fact that I feel crud and am having to pretend to everyone that I've got some kind of virus. I hate feeling rubbish and sorry for myself and not being able to whinge to all and sundry about it. Bleh.

Important Experiment

Today, we have been conducting a Very Important Experiment. We have decided to try to find an answer to this question: is there ANY filling this child????

Methodology was as follows: give her lots of food, and don't say no when she tries to steal ours.

I think we may have an answer. And that answer, you may be utterly unsurprised to learn, is NO.

Seriously, The Baby must have an extra stomach somewhere where she puts all this stuff. I'm pretty sure she's eaten nearly as much as I have today. She has eaten: a bowl of Rice Crispies, about a quarter of my toasted muffin, 15 grapes, 2 breadsticks, chicken with pesto (there were meant to be some peas involved there too, but she has decided they are no longer something she wants anything to do with), a banana, all the crusts from my sandwich, half a cherry tart, 3 rice cakes, a massive bowl of meatballs, vegetables and rice, and a fromage frais. And then she started picking at stray bits of rice around her highchair tray. Oh, and then another grape.

And now we're just waiting to find out whether she's going to be up all night with a bad tummy, or she's eaten herself into a stupor. The wee hours of the morning will tell.....

Are You On Drugs Or What?

... was the question asked of me and several of my fellow child-saddled friends, when we were having a discussion about something I had been watching on TV. Not on normal-person TV, on kiddie TV. After thinking about it, I realised that it was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. So, for all of you who are not in the happy position of not having to sit in front of this stuff, here is a quick guide to some of The Baby's favourite programmes...

1. Handy Manny - Latino handyman who can fix or build anything. ANYTHING. Good thing too, as he is the only tradesman of any description in his whole town. Is the object of a passionate and enduring crush from Kelly, who owns the hardware store. She keeps the store stocked with all manner of random shit, just in case Manny needs it, in the hope that one day he will turn around and realise that she will always have what he needs, and will marry her and have lots of bilingual babies. Too bad for Kelly, as he appears to be in love with his magic tools. Not a euphemism.
2. Waybuloo - big-faced creatures called Piplings play pika and do yogo with cheebies in a magical land called Waybuloo. I could translate this for you, but it wouldn't really make that much more sense.
3. In The Night Garden - this is very like the stories my dad used to make up for me when I was little. If he had taken acid and then fallen on his head. The characters include: Iggle Piggle - giant blue thing that looks like David Cameron. Upsy Daisy - mad bint with demented hair, who spends a disproportionate amount of her time snogging Iggle Piggle' Makka Pakka - thing that looks like a very pale poo, that is a bit OCD about cleaning stones. The Pontipines - weird little family with billions of kids that live in a big house and talk funny. Clearly immigrant scum.
4. Mr Tumble - slightly creepy-looking guy who uses sign language and has an clown alter-ego. Inexplicably charming to most children and adults. Why don't I get it?
5. Special Agent Oso - children all over the world (supposedly, but they all seem to be American) are abandoned by their parents to do age-inappropriate tasks, and are assisted in their endeavours by the world's stupidest green bear. Every task can be condensed into three special steps, whether it is opening a door, or building a nuclear bomb.
6. The Imagination Movers - four blokes who dreamed of being rockstars, but are now reduced to jumping up and down in red and blue jumpsuits for the entertainment of small children. Make me want to throw rocks at them.

Next time you're complaining about how crap daytime TV is, remember, it could be worse.

A Hard Day's Night..

.. and a hard day's day too, by the sound of it.

Any hopes I my have had that The Baby's new mattress would be the answer to all my sleep-deprived prayers were roundly squashed by last night's shenanigans. FYI Baby, 4am - not morning. I would really like her to sleep properly now. I've noticed that I don't so much have dark circles under my eyes as a purple face.

So it was with a weary mind, body and soul that I dragged my arse into work, where I spent most of the day mindlessly culling my boss's email instead of anything which required great amounts of energy, leaving Husband alone with the tiny demon. A very tired and grumpy little demon, who possibly has a sore throat, as, in Husband's words, she "sounds like a heron". I'm not sure I've ever heard a heron, to be honest, but she definitely isn't reaching her usual decibel levels. Received a phone call mid-afternoon that began with the words "What do you do when your baby's eaten mud?" and ended with "No, I told you to leave that alone!" and an abrupt hanging-up. See? Demon!

But then I came home from work, to see The Baby crawling towards the door with a (slightly raspy) shriek of joy, and somehow it's all forgiven and forgotten. Granted, the joy only lasted for about 12 seconds, and then she was off playing with my electricity bill again. But it's funny how those little moments somehow see you through.

Stuff, stuff and more stuff!

Like many other ladies born into our materialistic capitalist society, I am fond of a spot of shopping. When I was younger, it was all quite normal. I had staff discount at Topshop, and was not afraid to use it, and dedicated many years to trying to answer the question of whether one can really own too many handbags. Once I had my own home, however, it got a whole lot geekier. Kitchen gadgets! Ingenious storage solutions that you have to put together with allen keys! Soft soft furnishings! I thought that it didn't get much better than a trip to Ikea, perhaps followed by a read of the Lakeland catalogue.

And then I had a baby.

Now, everyone knows that babies require quite a lot of stuff. They need somewhere to sleep, something to be carted around in, stuff to wear, stuff to go on their bums, and all that jazz. But it is truly eye-opening to realise just how much stuff exists in the babysphere. A lot of it is truly brilliant, and I can't imagine how I got by without them, baby or no baby - muslin squares, baby wipes, and little plastic bowls (of which I now have so many scattered around the house with various things in them, that I sometimes can't find anything to serve The Baby her dinner in).
But the rest of it.... oh, my word. Even for a hardened gizmo-and-gadget-shopper like myself, it is quite, quite stunning. Any baby-related situation you can think of, and several million that you never would, you can be certain that someone has invented something to deal with it. Did you know that you can buy a baby-wipe warmer? I don;t have one of those. But here is a random selection of things that I do now own: a mini-food processor, a mini food-masher, a squeezy bulb thing to extract snot from tiny noses, a massive piece of fabric and mesh that fits over a pushchair to protect children from sun and insects, and a stripy material-and-strap portable highchair.

And the choices! The other day, I spent a long and very exciting evening trying to pick a new mattress for The Baby. I would not let Husband rest until he helped me pick between a pocket-sprung one, or one that was covered in bamboo (the wonder-fabric of the 21st century, apparently). I suspect that his actual thoughts on the matter may have been something along the lines of "Please leave me alone", but thankfully, he learned long ago that the quickest way to shut me up is to actually form and offer a valid opinion. In the end, I decided on the bamboo one, reasoning that I didn't have a fully pocket-sprung mattress until I was 28, so The Baby could live without one at 15 months old.

But it's quite ridiculous how excited I got about this. I don't think I've ever been so excited by a purchase ever. Not the Pierre Hardy for Gap platform sandals with 75% off. Not my honeymoon. Not either of my houses. To be fair, part of the excitement stems from the hope that this purchase might be the one that helps The Baby stay asleep for more than 3 hours at a time. But I reckon that most of it stems from the fact that I am a very, very sad individual.