The mum/me balance

When I lived in Japan, the local stray cat – who we had named Josephina – one evening roamed into our apartment and nestled herself under our sofa. In the middle of the night we understood why she’d hunkered down there – she mewingly gave birth to 5 kittens. 5 tiny slimy blind gorgeous little kittens, who for the next 6 months lived with us, grew bigger and furrier and insatiably playful, became our surrogate children and were the source of unending joy and fun and cuteness.

Not so for Josephina. Beyond the initial weeks of never ending helpless suckling, where she was the epitome of purring eyes-closed bliss, lying contentedly down in her box nest we created for her in the back of our cupboard, her 5 babes suckling at her gloriously fat belly… once the kittens became more mobile and rambunctious, she became a noticeably weary mother, irritable and moody, shrugging the kittens off angrily when they clamoured for milk, nipping and spitting at them if they persisted, and making her way speedily for the nearest exit where she could return to her alleycat prowling, leaving her kittens mewing desperately in her absence, before they were happily distracted by a ribbon…

I used to feel sad at this display of intense dislike of being Mama Cat. I felt quite sorry for her kittens and felt, hey, maybe Josephina isn’t cut out for feline motherhood, maybe she got knocked up by accident,maybe she  wasn’t quite ready to leave her prowling days behind her and settle into domesticity.

But now. Now I have some empathy for Josephina’s motherhood muddle.

The sheer physicality of having small children can be exhausting. At any given moment I’m a human climbing frame, a packhorse, a fellow monkey at play. Currently they’re both with me all day so I have to spread the cuddles evenly. This morning at one point Small 1 was climbing on my back whipping my hair around across my face “can you see mummy CAN YOU SEE??!”, while Small 2 was shimmying up my front whining and pulling up my top for boob access. This happened shortly after I had escaped to the toilet only to be followed by both, one saying “mummy are you going to do a poo?” while the other made train noises and threw some metal tank engines into the bath to enhance the tranquil atmosphere. For the briefest of instants I wanted to shout STOP THE MADNESS!!!

I know, I know, these are the days of our lives, the days are long, the years are short, this time is gone in the blink of an eye. So so true and I am already aware of my 10-years-hence self mourning this time, when I’m in the thick of the monosyllabic potentially hug-free (not if I can help it!) teenage years.

But, it’s tough and can leave you wishing for less touch, for a respite in the sensory stimulation…so it’s so important to maintain a link to the you the you were pre kids, a well of calm resilience you can tap into to be able to deal with moments where you feel overwhelmed in the melee. You know, those pre-children times where your body was your own, it was only for people to climb on if you invited that, a time where there was such a thing as modesty, as physical intrigue…having elbows jabbed into your tummy was a danger only if you were playing twister at a party… there was – remember this one mamas – “personal space”, and your housemates rarely wanted to accompany you to the toilet…you had time to stare out the window and just “be”. Of course, in those actual moments you were possibly  worrying about work, friendships, whether you’d ever have kids, etc…

As an antidote to the Josephina impulse to escape out the bathroom window when it gets a bit much, taking a few deep breaths is simple but a winner. Preferably  without children climbing on you – although bonus mama zen points if you’re able to channel your inner Buddha while there are fingers being poked up your nose – close your eyes, soften your shoulders and really truly breathe for a minute or two. Notice any tension in your body, allow it to release like a wave drawing away from shore. Soften your face, lengthen your spine. Imagine yourself sitting in a calm spot, gazing out to sea or out a window, onto green space, imagine having all the time in the world for you …and for that moment, you will.

Attack of the Supermums

It always amazes me how one day of mothering can be so totally different to the next. One day you can be sailing on pleasant calm seas with the wind at your back, the next suddenly there’s a perfect storm of crap and you lose your rag at the slightest missing-sock-related mishap.
I always find myself gazing at other mums, some friends, some who I only see at playgrounds and never have any contact with, and yearn for their life. Their clothes are stylish, their nails appear mani-ed, their kids are feisty and normal (other people’s children usually specialise healthily in proving that we’re all in the same boat) but they deal with everything, tantrums, fussiness, stubbornness with sage aplomb. They pack well-prepared healthy snack boxes and extra emergency pairs of trackie bums in their Tiba & Marl changing bags, and their buggies appear well kept and without squeaky wheel idiosyncrasies or “FFS stupid effing buggy!” moments ever needed….There’s an awe, an envy, a jealousy, a level of “how does she DO that…?” going on behind my gaze as I wonder how and when I might ever reach that superior level of mum sorted-ness, and imagine their houses to be as Pinterest-worthy as I feel their life is, in that magic moment.

And then, I have a week like this week which offered me a new perspective on that Supermum assumption. Yesterday I feel like I had a pro-surfer mum day, riding a wave that just kept on giving and glided me back to shore without a wobble but with a smile on my face the whole time: entertained both my boys (summer holidays are upon us) without relying on back to back Peppa all day long. Made healthy pizza. From scratch, smuggling in loads of veggies into the sauce. Created games involving both boys together, and managed to deal with their brotherly scraps without raising my voice. Even incorporated Mr Tumble-worthy entertainment into doing some cleaning, put wash loads on, made the goddam bed and changed the bedclothes. I was truly On A Roll. I awarded myself several Mum badges of honour. Then today happened. Ah, today, what did I ever do to you? Took the boys to the train station to catch a train that was cancelled and replaced by a bus service. Decided to change day plans, take a different bus route to a totally different destination, only to miss the bus by seconds and have to wait 23 minutes for the next, that 23 minutes being crucial in the “feed children to prevent meltdown” window coinciding with Small 1’s sudden urgent need for a wee with no tree around (despite multiple repeated suggestions for a wee stop before we left). Buggy decided to go into shopping trolley mode and lose the control of one of its wheels. Small 2 perfected his squeal/scream technique to ensure that the bus ride was a pleasure and a joy from start to finish. Lost my bank card somewhere at the museum, which I discovered when I was bribing Small 1 out of a bad mood by attempting to buy ice-cream…

Yes, today was a bugger. If I had seen myself the other day, Wonder Woman surfer mum day, I would possibly have thought, wow that lady has this mothering thing sorted doesn’t she, I could take a leaf out of her book. But today? Today i would’ve been rather smugly feeling like my life looked militarily precise and smooth compared to the mum I was pityingly observing.

We judge ourselves so harshly, possibly pre-babydom, but definitely throughout this mum thing. We are constantly spinning every plate in our lives, with finesse and grace whether it feels like it or not. Ok sometimes maybe not grace, but gusto, certainly. Take one look at your kids – do they look happy and healthy most of the time? If the answer is yes then you’re doing a great job. Small 2 made me take stock (and a few deep breaths today) after I had lost my card and was beginning to lose my sh*t along with it. He said “oh well mummy it’s ok look at the sky!”. His calmness and poise made me want to hug him to me and give him a huge squeeze. It also made me realise the amount of tantrums I had buffered his volcanic eruptions and now it felt that he was doing the same to me – so I couldn’t help but feel proud that maybe, just maybe he was modelling my own behaviour when things were turbulent for him. And maybe my calm gets him out of those swirly rages in a way I had never quite empathised with before.

Today made me realise anew that we’re all fighting fires, some days are calm and (relatively) peaceful at the fire station so we can kick back and enjoy a cuppa until the next call out. And others it feels like flames are lapping perilously close constantly and nerves are as frayed as our old cut off jeans. But rather than envying a Supermum that I see in the playground I’ve made a pledge today to realise that we’re all bloomin Supermum, depending on the day, the angle, the prism viewed through. And it’s about time we stop flagellating ourselves and celebrate that fact.

it’s time to dust off your super cape, ditch the envy and judgement, and off we go…

Landmarks

I started writing this blog post on the eve of Maurice’s 2nd birthday, but got waylaid by birthday cake and balloons so it’s now the day after his birthday. It has been a brilliant friend- and cake-filled few days, and also, as happens with these landmark events, time for reflecting on the year that has just concluded. It occurred to me that once you’re “grown up” your birthdays offer a chance mainly for gathering friends and sharing drinks and giggles, but often the years begin to whizz past without much opportunity to think about what has changed, evolved, disappeared, appeared in life compared to the year before. But for little people, each year that passes truly provides a landmark of development and literal growth.
What a year it has been…
Firstly, and it’s a true delight to be able to say this, Maurice appears to have discovered the simple joy of slumber over the past 4 months. He often sleeps all the way through the night until nearly 6am, and will ask for his cot when he’s tired, which compared to the sleepless marathon this time last year is a mighty miracle. He also loves to nap during the day for a couple of hours. I genuinely marvel and rejoice at this development…when he was tiny he just never slept at all, and cried constantly (shudder)…i do wonder how much my mental state suffered because of this over the first year of his life, and can’t help but envy those whose little ones learnt to sleep much sooner or were a bit less colicky. It is certainly a calmer life when you can rely on baby sleep for a few moments of down time in the day.
As if to mark his own 2nd birthday milestone, Maurice’s speech has suddenly leapt forward in the past week. It is impossibly sweet how he sings the Raa Raa theme tune to himself, missing out lots of words but singing with gusto “…my friends AND YOURS!”, and singing tit bits of nursery rhymes “row row gentle stream merry dream”. When Ben left for work this morning Maurice said “daddy gone cricket”… Which is I’m sure where daddy would have preferred to have gone on this sun-drenched morning… And he’s linking words to almost-proper sentences, “where daddy gone?”, or his first longish sentence a very sweet “where my cuddle gone?”. Whenever anyone leaves the room Maurice immediately says “sssh! Hide!!” and with a huge grin on his face tries to hide away before the person comes back in.
With every silver lining there must come a cloud, and this speech development has also brought forth some epic tantrums, “don’t like it, not this one, that one, don’t like this one, no take it away, mummy stop nooooooo” etc. I know this is purely his showing a new independence of thought, developing strong opinions and feelings and it’s all natural and positive…however tiresome and irksome it might be for me to be receiving worried/pitying/empathetic looks from passers by as I try to soothe or pacify a writhing and screaming toddler.
He loved his birthday visit to the zoo, especially the monkeys climbing, the snakes slithering, the giraffes…er, being tall, and the otters playing gleefully together.
We have a new green tomato in the garden and I’ve managed to convince Maurice that it’s not ripe for picking yet, so whenever he sees it he announces proudly: “tomato, can’t eat it. Red, eat it”.
He has a merry band of little buddies he sees regularly and they’re beginning to forge lovely friendships and show real delight in hanging out with each other, despite the occasional bash or push from Maurice…
His favourite food is chips. But he’ll still happily eat a broccoli floret too, and particularly loves mummy’s sweet potato chilli “nice, tasty!”. At lunch it’s a joy to hear him proclaim “yummy, mummy!”
He adores his family, his pumpa ken and mumma dede, his granny Lindsey and grandbob, and aunties Nikki, Chloe (cowie) and Rowan, uncle brendan and his cousin Sadie. And special super adoration is reserved for his older cousin senan, who he has serious hero worship for.
He loves his mini garden and quite theatrically sniffs the plants to take in their aromas, particularly for some reason the tomato plant with its bundle of tantalising green tomatoes.
It’s lovely to commemorate these landmark times for little ones, partly to offer ourselves a landmark time as well, assess how we were doing and where our life is when these milestones roll around. It’s otherwise a bit too easy to allow time to roll past without a backward glance. My gran always says as long as you’re learning you’re living, and you should never stop learning. This year has certainly been a learning curve. It’s always good to step back and have a look at the way life is evolving, viewing life as a garden to be tended and cared for, to notice areas that need pruning and areas that need special care or a bit more nurturing. Congratulate yourself for the successful blooms and learn from the plants that don’t fare so well, but move on without regret.
Sometimes it’s hard to remember to pause for thought. But next time you see a beautiful rose, whatever you’re doing, stop, go over, close your eyes and give it a big deep sniff and take in the beautiful life-enhancing scent.
Enjoy the sunshine wherever you are and until the next time…

The long kiss…hello

Hello world

Little Mo man has been whisked off for a morning of fun with his dad and grandparents so I am taking a few moments to have a cup of tea in our mini garden and revisit the blogosphere.

I wanted to touch again on the reason I began this blog…it was a way of exploring Maurice’s firsts, and enjoying the journey of discovery that he is on in his every day experience. Everything is new to him, which is sometimes easy to forget and lose patience with when you’re feeling old and wizened, which I sometimes am on a bad day.

The past 6 months have been a tempest of changes in so many ways, but it’s all too easy for these changes to be lost in the diurnal routine and then you only notice when you’ve moved past them. For example… the speech. Mo has been chattering away since he was a wee wee man, and since he was about 14 months has been layering his linguistic capabilities slowly but surely by adding words to the general chatter, and now linking words together to form adamant meaning and purpose. It’s now hard to recall a time when he wasn’t able to allude to what’s bugging him, when he wakes up in the night. Now at least he can shout WATER!! or MUMMY!! or, if the mood takes him, TRAIN CHOO CHOO!

Linguistically, he is asserting his own authority. Whenever he’s playing and he’s struggling with fitting a piece of lego together or the like, he will steadfastly refuse any assistance from me and try and try again, saying “Mo mo do it”…until he chooses the time to say “Hemme” (help me)…and he’s always ready to command “do it”, “get it”, “throw it”..I’m working on the added please…. He loves to say his own name, and to say “daddy, Ben”, “Mummy, Anya”, “Anya, Ben, Maurice, Momo, mummy, daddy”, as if gently mulling over our positions in the family.

I was listening to a programme on radio 4 a while ago (with one ear, so I can’t recall what programme) which was discussing depression and how we feel i these episodes that we lose control of our lives, and how to a certain extent the frustration and desperation felt may be a regression emotionally or a throw back to how we felt when we were babies/toddlers, and experiencing no autonomy in terms of how anything in our lives is run. This has been echoing in my ears over the last couple of weeks as Maurice is tugging and tussling with the fact that he isn’t necessarily the boss of him, and mummy will upsettingly want him to stop doing this (bashing the plants) or not do that (climb into the toilet) or say sorry for the other (pushing other little people). It must be really annoying.

I also am aware of feeling a latent sense of sorrow as he moves beyond his babyhood, he is now very much transmogrifying into a little boy before my very eyes, and the last remnants of babydom are slipping into that timeless pool of memory. Rather than allowing myself to feel sorrowful about the long kiss goodbye, where he skips along the road away from me, from being a part of me to being an entirely independent being who, shock horror may ultimately not entirely agree with everything I say and do…and as the kisses, cuddles and snuggles that he so happily and wonderfully bestows on me right now will be viewed as somewhat less cool in a few years’ time, it must be more positive to reframe each section of this journey as a new hello to each new episode.

And physically…we’ve recently entered a slightly alarming phase, for me anyway, which involves Maurice pushing other little ones over whenever he gets the chance. This is premeditated and forceful… there seems to be no anger, it’s more of a physics experiment to check out how gravity works to pull little bodies to the ground if given a shove. Unless he’s particularly tired, when it takes on a more malevolent feel and he adds in the occasional head butt into the mix. This leaves me in the role of the shameful mother who is continually apologising for him to the mothers of the various other toddlers he leaves toppled in his wake. It’s been quite a tiring and frustrating time, probably for both of us. He seems to understand no remorse for the act, and refuses to make eye contact with me when I’m telling him the errors of his ways. Hopefully it’s one of those fabled “phases”. His father was a bit of a basher as a small person, by all accounts, but he also has remained lifelong friends with all those he bashed at nursery, so there is at least hope for Mo in that respect that his ability to make friends may not be stunted by a spot of violence here and there.

So, hello and welcome to all the new phases of toddlerdom and childhood. Or, as Maurice’s 4-year old cousin Senan asserts, after you’re a toddler you then become a kid. And farewell to the baby era, you will be remembered with a big heap of nostalgia and rose tinted vision.

Have a lovely Saturday

Toddler steps

Hello world

Thanks for the many lovely responses to my last post, it was really touching to hear your words of comfort and camaraderie. It is a relatively common albeit heartbreaking experience that still looms heavy as a taboo often held secret… people maybe don’t really know what to say unless they’ve been through it themselves. I’ve found that a simple “big hugs” works wonders.

Life continues apace. Maurice is at that effervescent ever-changing period of his small yet mighty life, nearly turning the 18-month corner. He’s charging up his brain and personality more by the day. This equates to a lot of fun and endearing moments as his sense of humour develops and his talent for entertaining evolves. We are witness to his joy of learning how to tickle, learning to play “Maurice says” in his highchair, which is a game involving Maurice crossing his arms/waving his arms in the air and waiting for everyone around the table (even if it’s just me) to copy him….learning how to “cheers” with you before a meal – which now includes cheersing himself with two bottles and saying “cheees” with a massive grin – learning to be in a band, him with his mini guitar (which he plays with remarkable aplomb and confidence…I think he models his moves on Johnny Cash) and enlisting the available audience to join in on various other instruments be they real or improvised on body parts.

This growing phase also of course involves a great deal of spectacular tantrums as he is finding his limits and getting frustrated at them, and finding his sense of independence and getting frustrated at me for unfairly fettering this. BUT I WANT TO DRIVE THE CAR IT’S THE END OF THE WORLD IF I CAN’T. If he could talk, this is what he would be yelling at me on certain occasions.

He feels everything so fully and intensely, it’s truly fascinating (and at times challenging) seeing him go from an inconsolable shrieking floppy ragdoll to a jigging happy little busker strumming his guitar all in the space of about 2 minutes. Physically he’s been belting around like a crazy thing for a long time that I almost have forgotten what it was like not to have to continually chase after him. Ah the halcyon days when you could go for a coffee with a friend and enjoy it in a leisurely normal fashion without getting up every 3 seconds to retrieve a renegade toddler from behind the cafe counter/escaping out the door/some other mysterious disappearance!

Now he’s also beginning the linguistic journey, which is a lot of fun to behold. Every day he’s copying something new that I say (hmm, now I need to be careful what utterances I mindlessly allow to escape), and he’s practising his enunciation with thoughtful precision and measure. He particularly loves “t” at the moment, and will carefully repeat words such as “cot”, “hot”, “boat” (you get the picture…) with a loving pause and flourish over the t. There is an almost unbearable sweetness to his answer to the question “What does a lion say?”…”Raaaaa’, a rumbling throaty roar uttered with a delighted grin. Cows, on the other hand, often say “no”. They can be rather disagreeable in the face of questioning. It’s great fun watching his delight with his new skills…particularly today when he was shouting “daddy!” at every man who we walked past on our stroll to a friend’s house. It was rather amusing seeing the varying degrees of fear or humour across each man’s face.

So it’s entirely new scenery that we’re passing through on our journey together at the moment. I’m trying to capture it before it whizzes past to the next stop on the line.

Hope you’re all well… I’ve got another blog post ruminating so I may be back sooner than usual!

Sunny side up

Hello world!

It’s been a while since the last blog, a trifling incidental detail of finishing writing my book got in the way. And now it’s done and dusted, woo hoo! Watch out for it in January, published by DK, A Little Course in Pilates. It’s a course taking you step by step through the levels to the advanced mat work. Loads of great exercises included and guidance on how to chart your progress and create your own goals. I’m looking forward to seeing it as it looks great as all DK books do. Very proud!

I’m in Prince Edward Island, the land of Anne of Green Gables (Many 30-something women may remember with a flutter and a warm heart the lovely Gilbert Blythe from the TV series in the 80s). PEI has been a formative place in my childhood and growing up, and now it has become part of Maurice’s babyhood experience … the deep blue sea, rusty red earth, pine greens and golden sun, blown by the sea breeze and spun into his fibres as well. He’s had a few weeks of tumbling around in the outdoors everyday, with the sunshine warm upon his face, wind at his back (and occasionally rain soft upon our fields), which is an amazing thing to be able to offer him. Peckham we love, but I can’t give him an expanse of greenery that is his own personal private yard to frolic around and chase cats (occasionally catching them, much to their disgust).

Mo arrived here 4 weeks ago, able to walk but not confidently. Now, he is bounding around like a delighted puppy, without any fear or trepidation (much to my fear and trepidation). Watching him at the beach has been the most wonderful thing… he strides into the waves defiantly as if they are familiar and friendly, and yet 4 weeks ago he had never been in the sea.

We have had the pleasure of spending two weeks with my sister and her entourage, 3 children under 5 tumbling around together happily, occasionally bashing each other too, and it’s a lesson in observing family generations and narratives unfold before your eyes. I remember clearly when I was about 8, sitting right here with my sister discussing when we would come back to Country House with our children and what we would do with them (a trip to Rainbow Valley being top of the list…sadly this wonderful place no longer exists). And now here we are, she with two littelies and us with MoMo, gambolling around the same territory that Rowan and I first crawled and tottered and raced and chased cats many (many…) years ago.

I guess having children is a lovely way of reflecting back over your own family life and seeing it anew in 3D technicolor. And realising how lucky lucky we are to have such a place as Prince Edward Island in our lives.

Mo also has shown us that he loves to eat mussels. Bucketloads of them. We are very proud.

Until the next time, eat your eggs sunny side up. This is the happiest way.

Mo and my Peckham life

Hello world

So, yesterday was Maurice’s birthday, 15th July. It was also St Swithin’s Day, and according to olde english tradition, the weather on this feast day portends the weather for the next 40 days. Well, wish that it were true my friends, as yesterday was the first non totally rainy day that we’ve had for weeks and weeks, it was even quite bright and sunny, dare I say it, SUMMERY, for a few brief minutes at a time, and didn’t rain. So hurrah for the next 40 days I thought gleefully. But no…it’s drizzlingly wet and gloomy again today. It’s amazing the impact it has on your mood, weather like this. I have taken to listening to the Beatles Here Comes the Sun at intervals, so I can get the same effect as a ray of sunshine on my skin and to my psyche that way. I would suggest doing the same yourself if you’re similarly suffering.

Anyhoo…so, Maurice is a YEAR OLD! Wowzers! I am so happy and proud and excited that he is a year old, it’s been an insanely eventful yet uneventful year. I haven’t been on a plane or on holiday for 15 months, which is the longest I think i have ever gone without flying. So this is good for my carbon footprint, if nothing else. I have been pondering how the last year has affected my habits, my life generally, for the better.

Having a baby has definitely increased my dependence on all things local: the local community, neighbours, local parks…I feel much more integrated into my neighbourhood than I ever did or felt need to before. For the first 9 weeks of Maurice’s life i actually didn’t leave Peckham once, except for an excursion down the road to Brockley to visit a midwife friend who was giving me some breastfeeding coaching. That’s a long time not to leave anywhere, let alone Peckham, some people might suggest. This was mainly indicative of the fact that Maurice was a bit of a challenge when it came to…well, everything, for the first 9 weeks of his life, and so the idea of attempting a ride on public transport was actually more stressful than I could bear, and I found comfort in relaxing strolls around Peckham Rye park where Mo would slumber in the sling (never the buggy, he was NOT a fan of the buggy), which gave me some fresh air, some peaceful moments and exercise, simultaneously offering Mo some calming effects of kangaroo care in the sling which seemed to help his extreme fraught fussiness.

Now that my Pilates business is mainly a home-based business I am meeting more people in the community that way, and have become much more locally oriented. The other day I had to cycle into town for a course and I felt like a tourist, totally not part of the hub, swimming against the tide almost and not in sync with the sinews and twists and turns of central London life. I know that it would only take a short while to be whisked back into the swing of things, but it made me reflect that i rather like my Peckham life, my mummy friends close by, becoming attached to local cafes and knowing what’s going on with local events, independent shops, farmers market etc. It feels like a more sustainable way of living, if I could throw in a Good Life style market garden I’d be laughing. Maybe some time in the future…

I guess for the first time I feel like I have been planted for long enough that perhaps I am putting down roots.

So, from this more deeply rooted position, I’d like to commemorate some thoughts and grand moments of the last year for the little one year old man.

Taking him home from hospital: the main sentiment that we felt upon arriving at home was a surge of relief that we were home after a week which had felt like a year. We had our very little tiny new babe at home at last. The fact that we weren’t given a manual for looking after him was slightly disconcerting, but just the sheer relief of being away from hospital and into our own time zone and rhythm was enough to stall any fears about what the hell you do when they fill their nappy, does that wavy arm thing mean they’re hungry, why do they grunt like a little piglet, is that a smile or just wind, and if they are asleep for over an hour is it ok to poke them to check whether they’re still breathing?

The first tentative crawl (backwards), at 5 months…as soon as Mo started moving, something seemed to click for him, that this thing was All Right. He had simply been stifled and anxious before as he couldn’t get around. He needs constant motion, my little man, which is why slinging him has always been the best way. On his own, lying down, he never felt comfortable being stranded on his back..I looked at babes who would merrily lie on their mats or on cushions for ages totally happy and content, with amazement – Mr Mo was never one of those. Once he could edge around and travel, his world became a much less anxious place. Mine, on the other hand…

His boundless enthusiasm and smile. I love it…makes me happy to the brim. Even on a day like this, Maurice can manage to be gleeful about a dance around the kitchen, or a picture of a dog (ah! Ah! he says, pretending to be a dog), or the sight of a toothbrush.

The pure way he reacts to life…as yet there is no ambiguity, everything is taken at face value and as such he feels things very strongly, but can also be lifted from a grump very easily into happiness again. We could probably all learn tips from this easy transition between light and dark, shrugging off low thoughts and moving on to the next happy.

He managed to sleep for just over 9 hours on the eve of his birthday, which was a breakthrough and shows that at least I know he can do it, uninterrupted slumber for nearly a whole night, he went to bed at 6.45pm and didn’t rise until 4.15am which is simply astounding and better than he’s ever done before. He didn’t replicate it last night, but I still have hope that there WILL be sleep in our future…some time…

We had a wonderful birthday party for Mo on Peckham Rye Park in the sort of summery day, with some of his friends and nearly all of his family around him, and he ate jelly for the first time. As far as he was concerned, this appeared to be the best moment of his life so far.

Long may these moments continue!

My year of no sleep…

Hello world!

It’s the eve of my original due date of little Maurice monkey. He was supposedly due to arrive into the world on 3rd July last year. And although this “due date” phenomenon appears to be an entirely arbitrary plucking of a date out of the air rather than adhering to any particularly concrete science that I can see (my calculated due date had been 7th July and the 12-week scan brought the date forward by 4 days…but then he was born much later…), you can’t help but be in some way emotionally caught up in the date you have been told your baby will be bouncing into your world on. You tell people for at least 6 months that your baby is due on this particular day, and coming up for the day everyone is asking you about it and merrily counting down to it…the day arrives and you feel a sense of anticipation, akin to waiting on the side of the Jubilee street pageant, waving your flag and admiring the bunting, waiting for Queenie to drive past regally. And so if Queenie doesn’t arrive, you’re left waving your flag as the streets empty around you, with a sense of slight deflation. Once you’re past the day you receive well-meaning texts with shouty messages such as “NO BABY YET???” “HAVE YOU POPPED YET??”, as if you’d had your baby but omitted to let anyone know. And if bubba hasn’t appeared within 2 weeks beyond it, you’re more than likely to be induced into labour artificially. But that is a whole other issue, as we know…

So from 3 July last year I remember my sleep suffering, as every potential twinge was noted “is this what a contraction feels like….or do I just need the loo…?” wondering every night whether tonight would be the night I met my baby. He stayed inside for 12 days after his due date, he wasn’t particularly keen to come out, and due to the narrative of my birthing experience I had had absolutely zero sleep for about 3 days when he did finally enter the world. Now, when you’re about to start a new job you’d probably want to start it feeling refreshed and energised and ready, rather than feeling like you need some industrial strength caffeine injected into your bloodstream just to keep your eyelids open.

Newborns are renowned for sleeping a lot in the first couple of weeks or so. Maurice, for whatever reason, wasn’t one of these newborns. He slept for 20 minutes here and there, occasionally slept blissfully on my chest for an hour at a time, but was mainly unhappy and crying a lot poor wee man, as he was tiny and had lots of problems with establishing feeding. He seemed to have a pavlovian reaction to being put to the breast: he would scream. Take him away, he could be calmed. Put him back, he screamed…given that he needed to be calm at the breast to get any nutrition into him, we had a bit of a tough screamy time of it over the first few weeks (I was rather tunnel-visioned for various reasons about the idea of simply offering him a bottle of formula to give him some proper nourishment and me some rest – after all, your milk supply actually really suffers if you’re run down and exhausted, which seems like an evolutionary defect as far as I’m concerned – but in the dogged daze of trying to establish breastfeeding and the various opinions around it didn’t seem like an option). Even with a calmer easily feeding baby, those first few weeks of having a baby are a turbulent melee of experiencing every hour of the 24, operating on a very basic level, learning new skills, fumbling in the middle of the night to change nappies and get to grips with the inconceivable popper arrangement of some sleepsuits (those clearly not designed by a parent), and if your baby is sleeping, chances are you’re not as you’re gazing at him/her with awe and smiling that you get to keep them and don’t have to give them back, or generally constantly checking that they’re still breathing.

The first two nights in a row back from hospital Mo slept from 4am to 8am, rather cruelly on his behalf as it lulled me into thinking that he would sleep from 4am to 8am every night, and eventually this would elongate and soon he would go to bed easily and happily at 7pm and sleep for 13 hours straight and always wake up at 8am and that would be just brilliant, this baby thing was a complete doddle, why do people complain so much? Turns out this long 4-hour stretch of sleep wouldn’t be replicated until he was 7 months, and even then certainly not every night…

From about 8 weeks on, one of the first things people ask you about your baby is “does he sleep through the night?”, or “how’s his sleep?”, “is he a good baby?”…and in the various parenting guides you read confident paragraphs such as “by this time, your baby is probably sleeping for much longer periods, maybe even sleeping through the night, so you’re probably be feeling more rested and normal by now” (I remember wanting to throw this particular book out the window when reading this paragraph). You may have friends who have babies who have started to “sleep through”, waking or being woken briefly for a feed at 10pm and then sleeping soundly until the early hours. So if you’re still stuck with hourly wakings, you begin to feel like you’ve missed a bus that everyone else is comfortably on, having run for it in the rain and been left bedraggled on the pavement…

Up until Mo was about 6 months, I could just about feel like it was “normal” that he was still waking so often, sometimes hourly to feed. The fact that we had so many problems with breastfeeding (another topic for another blog day) made me reluctant to stop breastfeeding overnight as it was the only time he would feed calmly at the boob. I had seen a lactation consultant when he was 6 weeks old about the various feeding issues we were having, he had been losing weight and wasn’t thriving. She glimpsed a copy of The Baby Whisperer sitting on my coffee table (the “light” Gina Ford…which seemed so easy and so simple and foolproof when I read it before having an actual baby in my arms), and said that if I had tried to impose a 3-hour feeding rule such as the one in that book on Mo he would simply have died. Which was slightly disconcerting to say the least, but made me feel better that i had followed his vociferous demands for feeding rather than try and place some regime on it. And on some level it probably made me nervous about ever not feeding him overnight if that’s what it felt like he needed or if it was the only thing that soothed him.

And in those early weeks/months, all you really do with your days is sit on the sofa trying to feed your baby and probably watch a hefty amount of daytime TV (I became slightly obsessed with the Real Housewives of Orange County), or meet other mums and eat carrot cake and drink coffee (probably decaf), and talk about poo and sleep and nappies and whether your baby is actually smiling yet or whether it might be wind…and you’re probably all talking sleepless gibberish and not really paying attention to what anyone else is saying, nor do you need to as you’re all in the same boat… so you really don’t need to be firing on all cylinders of the brain really, everyone is operating within the same haze of bleary-eyed newness.

Once the first three or four months are under your belt, it becomes slightly more problematic having a sleepless baby. For me personally, I am freelance and I went back to teaching a couple of classes a week when Mo was 3 months old, and started various forays into other freelance work, including a day working at my publisher editing the app to accompany the My Pilates Guru book. Operating within the real non-baby world having had 4 hours’ broken sleep highlights how much affect sleeplessness has on your brain and body, and makes you realise you’re inside a strange slow-motion bubble while everyone zips around unforgivingly at normal speed. I felt I needed to wear a badge that said “it’s ok, I’ve just had a baby” to explain the blue black bags under the eyes, the grey pallor and the occasional slurred or incompressible speech, along with the bizarre penchant for discussing poo.

But aside from that…in my experience, all the other babies in the world started to sleep for decent stretches by 4 or 5 months, usually with little input from their parents in terms of “training”, they simply started to sleep for longer stretches… but Mo was determinedly sticking to his guns and waking vocally and moodily at least every 2 hours, and not able to settle himself back to slumber. Quite apart from the lack of sleep starting to kick in as a very real and debilitating physical and emotional issue, you also start to question why you’re the only one who’s still having this problem. And have to contend with opinions, advice and judgements, however well-meaningly delivered, every day that might help you to get the little man to sleep better and sort your life out.

It’s a curiously lonely thing, having a sleepless baby beyond the acceptable time for sleepless babies…everyone accepts that the first 3 months is a weary bleary time which you need to just take on the chin having decided to plunge into parenthood, but if your baby is still not sleeping “through the night” at 4 months onwards, people look at you with a sympathetic/pitying raised eyebrow and probably suggest you try controlled crying or that there’s something else you’re probably doing wrong, be it cosleeping/feeding to sleep/use of a dummy/(insert other emotive issue), and you realise that with a prolonged situation of sleepless baby syndrome you sort of end up doing whatever you can just to find some semblance of normal night time in your household. Things that people who have no children, or parents of “good” sleeping babies, look wide-eyed and silently disapproving at, such as cosleeping, or sleeping on a mattress on the floor of your baby’s room, or maybe perhaps, I don’t know, falling asleep with your face squidged up against the bars of the cot so that your baby can hold onto your hair while he falls asleep… And it’s something that no one can really understand or empathise with unless they have also had lengthy experience of sleepless baby syndrome. Like I said, the baby book The Baby Whisperer on paper seemed like such an obvious and easy thing to put into practice before I had a Maurice, of COURSE put your baby down drowsy but awake in order for it to learn to self settle and therefore not rely on you to go to sleep ever, and build independence and healthy sleep patterns, of COURSE that is sensible and practical and right. But, ah, so hang on, my baby only has AWAKE or ASLEEP settings, he doesn’t have a DROWSY BUT AWAKE (and stay drowsy don’t ping fully awake and get angry when set down in cot) setting…erm, what are you supposed to do now book…?

Nearly a year on, and Mo has only three times slept for longer than a 4-hour stretch…There are days when Ben and I feel utterly destroyed by tiredness, but then actually because we haven’t experienced a night of proper sleep for a year we’re probably completely used to it and would feel a bit jet lagged if he (and we) were to suddenly sleep for 12 hours tonight. The times that he has slept his longest stretches, from 7pm-2am, I have been almost entirely awake from midnight wondering when the next waking will be. I have lost the sense of “going to bed”, the looking forward to laying my head on the pillow to welcome the sandman and relax into dreamland, as my “going to bed” is always slightly on edge, wondering when I will be woken, as I will definitely be woken at some point, a few times, before the break of day.

I believe that eventually Mo will get it, all in good time. I know that I won’t be complaining that he wakes up crying every 2 hours when he’s 15…I hope…but in the meantime, in the moment, some days are a bit of a fog, feeling like a bit of a misfit in a land of functional parents who efficiently get their functional babies to sleep for the designated baby sleep 7pm-6am/7am timeline. 7am…wow, Ben and I used to have an alarm clock that woke us up at 7.15 pre-baby. Now we’ve usually been awake with Mo for about 2 hours by that time.

So…I have met a group of friends who also have sleepless babies, and wow it makes such a difference to know you’re not alone, you no longer feel like you’re doing something hugely wrong, but instead realise that babies are all different, and ours happen to be slightly more highly strung when it comes to being able to sustain sleep for a long period, and they are all fine and jolly and confident babies who just seem to function just as well on less sleep (dammit). As an aside: these are friends who i believe will remain friends even if one of our babies suddenly starts sleeping magically…one of us said in a worried fashion the other day that her baby had started sleeping better for a period, and she was a bit concerned that it meant she couldn’t see us as she had moved to the “other” side… So now, nearly a year on, I may be still waiting for a good night’s sleep, but i am massively and smilingly thankful for my amazing little man, who is wonderful and fun and funny and lovely and sweet. This makes him a good, nay, great baby in my eyes. Sleep or no sleep.

But…I’d quite like to be able to boast having had a good night’s sleep this time next year please Mo…